Listening to 670 The Score at 12:14 PM today, I heard Leila Rehimi say this about journalism:

Journalism is sociology on fast forward.

I can see the logic in this as journalists and sociologists are interested in finding out what is happening in society. They are interested in trends, institutions, patterns, people in different roles and with different levels of access to power and resources, and narratives.

There are also significant differences in the two fields. One is hinted at in the quote above: different timelines. A typical sociology project from idea to publication in some form could takes 4-6 (a rough average). Journalists usually work on shorter timelines and have stronger pressures to generate content more quickly.

Related to this timing issue is the difference in methods for understanding and analyzing data and evidence. Sociologists use a large number of quantitative and qualitative methods, follow the scientific method, and take longer periods of time to analyze and write up conclusions. Sociologists see themselves more as social scientists, not just describers of social realities.

I am sure there are plenty of sociologists and journalists with thoughts on this. It would be interesting to see where they see convergence and divergence between the two fields.