The art today lies in doing journalism despite the media, says a former editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit." He highlights the significant difference between the communicative orientation of journalistic action and the profit logic of a differentiated media system. Both have specific, but by no means identical, tasks and functions within a deliberative public sphere. The normative understanding of discursive journalism aims to independently contour journalism as a communicative action rooted in everyday life. It is an expression of a scientific journalism that not only perceives journalism as an object of empirical analysis but also as a social context of meaning to be understood, as well as a critical and emancipatory practice of enlightenment.