Journalism in the Quarterly: A Century of Change in the Industry and the Academy

The very first article published in the new Journalism Quarterly, in January 1924, was titled “The Professional Spirit.” It was a fitting start for the journal, which over the next 100 years tracked the maturation of journalism as a profession and journalism studies as a field of scholarly inquiry. This article explores how “journalism” evolved in the pages of the journal through a turbulent century. By analyzing the changing debates and tracking the incremental but steady expansion of knowledge, we seek to provide insights into where journalism scholarship started, the path we traveled, and how we arrived at today.