Losing Control

Abstract

Journalism education in Sweden emerged in the late 1950s after more than 50 years of discussions. This historical process is analyzed in this article as an interplay of forces, where different interest groups tried to shape how journalists were to be educated once the existing apprenticeship system was replaced by journalism schools. Using the work of sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Margaret Archer, this study closely follows the struggle inside the journalistic field, and between the journalistic field and the academic field and other interest groups, about how journalists were to be trained and by whom. This study reveals how conflicts over journalism education tended to migrate; from who would run a journalism school in the postwar years to the governmental investigations of the 1960s and the prevailing internal conflict between theory and practice at the two national Journalist Institutes in the 1970s. This article discusses what is commonly understood to be the professionalization of journalism. However, from another perspective, it can also be viewed as a trade losing control over its education.