What is journalism? · The Century of Journalism

The famous Austrian news presenter Armin Wolf indeed sees journalism as a craft:

“Journalism is a craft with rules and routines. And a public service. Journalists provide society with the factual basis it needs as the foundation for its shared affairs.”

With the public service comes, at the same time, an answer to the Why? question. For society – whether in a village community, a federal state, a country like Germany, a community like the European Union, or even as a world society – needs verified facts in order to be able to make decisions about its respective present and future. We can speak of a necessary societal synchronisation and understand journalism as the “age’s conversation with itself” (Birkner, 2012). My colleague Klaus Meier recorded his journalism lecture as a video in 2021 and defines journalism in it, as in his accompanying textbook, as follows: