Journalism is evidence-based reportage, research-driven analysis and non-fiction publication about contemporary matters in the public interest. I have spent my adult life working in and around journalism – professionally and creatively, as a scholar and educator. I support a radically expansive understanding of what journalism is, could and should be – intellectually, creatively and politically. 

Intellectually, journalism should recognise itself as a discipline among the humanities with affinities for history, geography and sociology, and as one of the creative arts.  Critical self-reflection is essential.  The intellectual quality of journalism can be gauged by the questions it asks. Like all the humanities, it is necessarily interdisciplinary.  It should demand of and for itself the necessary scope and rigour of a discipline, without for a moment sacrificing its public accessibility and accountability.

Journalism requires news sense: that is, a sensibility about significance.  It manifests in the ways a story is investigated and told, and it creates meaning through juxtaposition. Necessarily, therefore, journalism is an art form; but its product cannot be reduced to an art object.  Like all art forms and disciplines, journalism is constituted by the position, perspective and methods of its practice. 

Journalists are front-line brokers in the politics of contemporary knowledge, a fraught and contested position. Often, successful careers require the production of silences.  Indeed, journalism could be said to produce silences as much as knowledge.  As with history and all disciplines, an essential role for the critical practitioner is to identify and explore silences, because silences speak volumes. 

Speaking truth to power will provoke opposition, witness the annual global toll of suppression, imprisonment, and deaths, not least currently in and around West Asia. Journalism cannot be the exclusive preserve of tame corporate workforces.  The broadest and most creative capacity to produce journalism is fundamental to the common good. 

This website is a portal to some of my projects and practice over many years.  Current projects are here. Please contact me at chris@chrisnash.com.au if you have trouble getting access to any of this work.