Abstract
Journalism history, like media history, is an impressively interdisciplinary field in which historians, literary critics, sociologists, philosophers, and communication scholars regularly engage each other's work. Yet journalism is also rare in the extent to which practitioners have written far-ranging histories of their own profession. Examining five well-known histories written by journalists practicing in Britain—Francis Williams, Phillip Knightley, Hugh Cudlipp, Matthew Engel, and Andrew Marr—it argues that even if their methodologies differ from those of academics, their contributions should be taken seriously both as secondary literature and as primary sources for our understanding of the changing culture of journalism in modern Britain. In particular, they give us insight into journalists’ ongoing attempts to define their own profession and genre against the backdrop of journalism's ever-changing material context.
Published Version
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