Some Problems of Bridge-Building

Sorry—there is such a thing as academic arrogance, and it does hamper cooperation on equal terms between academics and practising journalists. A deeply rooted assumption of a thought-versus-action dichotomy, this essay suggests, is a driver of academic de facto dissociation from the world of practice—praxis in the classical sense—and has affected, in particular, scientific approaches to communication studies, journalism studies included. Opting for the non-practical—even anti-practical—imagined position of an outside observer, scientific researchers inhabit a dimension of reality in which the challenges faced by practitioners, as participants, are invisible. They belong in another, unrecognized dimension of reality. The essay explores aspects of the history of the assumed thought-versus-action dichotomy and how it has affected academic attitudes to practical (as distinct from technical) professions, such as journalism. To facilitate cooperation, we might adopt the notion of a journalistic field inhabited, at the same time, by practitioners of journalism and practitioners of journalism studies. As participants in the journalistic endeavour they need shared platforms for reflection and exchange. Bridge-building between theory and practice, akin to the dissemination and application of knowledge taking place in the technical professions, is hardly possible. Journalists are not engineers.