ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the key components of James Carey’s call for a cultural history of journalism and examines the essay’s reception by journalism historians. It aims to identify areas in which Carey’s terminology requires clarification and focus, namely the contested notions of consciousness, ritual and the report. The chapter discusses basic assumptions of cultural analysis and institutionalism, as well as how they each help to articulate certain aspects of Carey’s vision of a cultural history of journalism. It presents a model of cultural institutionalism and its basic elements–journalism as cultural institution, journalism as media regime and journalism as news logic. Shedding the historical baggage of earlier attempts to conceptualise institutions, the new institutionalism planted particularly strong roots in political science and sociology. Institutionalism has provided a sophisticated terminology to describe and explain specific historical formations of journalism. Institutions constrain actors by rules, practices and narratives.
