The growing literature on deliberative democratic practice finds that deliberation is a difficult and relatively rare form of communication. Each moment of a deliberative encounter raises significant obstacles in the path to stimulating greater intentional reflection on public issues. I explore these obstacles in the context of other empirical work in political and social psychology, small group communication, and public opinion. Taken together, these literatures explain why deliberation is difficult to achieve and sustain over time. They also suggest several rules that might assist practitioners in making deliberative democracy work better. Many of the obstacles to deliberative democracy raise questions about key theoretical constructs closely associated with deliberative democratic theory, including equality, legitimacy, autonomy, and reason. I conclude by suggesting that deliberative practitioners, empirical scholars, and theorists might gain from greater interaction.

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Building on a prior ethnographic study conducted in the same newsroom, this essay offers a conceptual framework for understanding current efforts to transform metropolitan daily newspapers. At the time of the study, Calvin Thomas, a new editor and executive-vice president of the newspaper, mandated that his reporters produce more enterprise and less daily news. Yet, after a year, not only did reporters’ production of enterprise news decrease, their production of daily news actually increased. I explain this consequence as a result of the deep structure of daily newsgathering, coupled with the inability and/or unwillingness of reporters and editors to bear the costs of altering this structure. I argue that while the particulars of this case study may be peculiar to this newsroom, this conceptual framework is helpful for understanding the general process of transformation in American newspaper newsrooms that is currently under way.

Among news production scholars, interest in the theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Latour, and related authors has grown in the last 20 years. However, few have recognized that these theories contribute to a broader practice perspective in social theory that traces back to the writings of Heidegger, and more directly, to Wittgenstein. In this essay, I outline four basic elements of this approach that are shared across these theories. Among these elements is the notion that social action is organized into discrete practices, and that these practices are produced and reproduced in their performance by individuals. I then assess the practice scholarship in the sociology of news in the context of these elements. I show that while a great deal of research has focused on news practices, relatively little has investigated journalistic performance. Thus, the field has not exploited, as well as it might, the panoply of tools and concepts developed by practice theorists.