A Short History of Journalism for Journalists: A Proposal and Essay

Abstract

James W. Carey was a Shorenstein Center Fellow on leave from his faculty position at Columbia University when he wrote this article in 2003. Carey, who died on May 23, 2006, was a preeminent journalism theorist. He is noted for his “ritual theory” of journalism, which posits that journalism is a type of drama as opposed simply to a means of public communication. Carey joined the Columbia Journalism School’s faculty in 1992 after having been professor and dean of the College of Communication at the University of Illinois. Few scholars could match his writing skills and fewer still could match his intellect. All that was combined in a thoroughly decent man who, though teaching in New York City, held tight to a lifelong devotion to the Boston Red Sox. The Shorenstein Center is fortunate to have had him as one of its fellows, and through its Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, to have the honor of publishing one of the last articles he wrote.