The Formation of the Journalistic Field

Abstract

This chapter aims at understanding the structural and economic causes of the transition in the British press from a public to a journalistic discourse in the course of the 19th century. It focuses on the formation of the journalistic field in Britain, as part of the argument that the journalistic discourse is the product of the emergence, during the second half of the 19th century, of a special-ized and increasingly autonomous field of discursive production. 2.1 JOURNALISM AS A FIELD OF DISCURSIVE PRODUCTION The formation of the journalistic field began when the taxes on knowledge were repealed between 1855 and 1861. As long as the taxes on knowledge were imposed on the press, stamped papers were priced at 7 pence. This price was well out of reach of the vast majority and thus the market of readers was small and too restricted to trigger market mechanisms. The repeal of the taxes between 1855 and 1861 changed all this and opened up the possi-bility of selling newspapers for one penny, and a few decades later, for half-a-penny. This price, affordable for more people, greatly enlarged the market of newspapers' readers. From that time on, newspaper owners and journalists have competed for shares in this market. Through diverse mechanisms, these competitive struggles have created the journalistic field. Section 2.1 introduces the concept of the journalistic field. Sec-tion 2.2 examines the mechanisms which exacerbated competi-tive struggles among newspapers from the 1850s onwards and which brought into existence the journalistic field in Britain. Section 2.3 focuses on the way economic competition has structured the 32