Introduction: Towards a functional perspective on journalism’s role and relevance

Notions of life and death hold a prominent place in our metaphorical repertoires.
As oppositional pairs go, there are few more stark and palpable, and this is probably
why it’s not only tempting but also persuasive to present the claim for journalism’s
worth in similar terms. If journalism is indeed the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ and all
this implies, societies with an unhealthy press are evidently at risk. Pleas for solutions
to improve journalism’s conditions therefore tend to go hand in hand with
doomsday scenarios about the broader losses for society if journalism-as-we-know it
should cease to exist. While such thinking may not always be put in austere terms,
it is nonetheless a constitutive part of the discourse that surrounds journalism as well
as the basis for many concerns over its future.