ABSTRACT
Mass communication emerged in journalism education in the late 1940s as a term that might better represent the burgeoning field of journalism education. According to Wilcox (1959), the term-which was used “to denote the anatomy, process, function and effect of the mass media and their audiences”—seemed to have the potential “to bring some sort of unity to a field hitherto considered in piecemeal” (p. 7). Because of its theoretical focus, however, mass communication was to come into sharp conflict with the more practical journalism subfields and was not soon to be accepted as an overarching term for the various sequences of journalism education or even to feel at home among them.
