Journalism Theories: Why They Do Not Work?

The discussion started by the journal Theoretical and Practical Issues of Journalism to revise the existing approaches to the theory of journalism, did not arise by chance. According to some philosophers, we are witnessing the dismantling of the capitalist system: the world is irreversibly changing. This fact applies to all spheres of life. Obviously, a new — third (in addition to mental and cultural), virtual reality is being formed (hyperreality). The era of the Digital is coming, the time of artificial entities — simulacra. And it is precisely at this epoch break that the essence of journalism manifested itself. Why was society able to exist? Solely thanks to a certain centripetal force integrating the most diverse centrifugal elements and aspirations into a single rational human system. Not politics, not economics, not culture, but journalism, through the organization of the flow of images, allows all those social institutions to function normally, which we habitually perceive as managers of society. The attitude towards journalism itself reflects this fact: it has not yet developed generally accepted criteria for excellence. And if for the functioning of the journalism of the Gutenberg era, its superficial understanding was sufficient, then today the theorists are confused before the surging reality: media, journalism, media and mediality, communications, IT technologies, virtuality. The author substantiates the idea that the problem of creating the theory of journalism lies not in certain scientific approaches (or specific scientific disciplines), but in the absence of understanding of the phenomenon of journalism that would be congruent (authentic) with modern realities. Today the vast majority of researchers (at least in Russia) is interpreting journalism as a kind of narrow field of practice, without actually taking into account the true scale and importance of the "media phenomenon" in the functioning of the modern information society. To solve this problem it is necessary to create a General (meta-) theory of journalism, which has the character of interdisciplinary generalization.