The Albert Londres award (created in 1933, this prize rewards a print or television news coverage) and the topics it rewards can be seen as a pertinent indicator of the development of the French “ethnographic” journalism. Indeed, the prize list has included “new” forms of expression, such as social issues since the 1980’s or the press portraits since the mid 1990’s. Through this French case study, we will consider how ethnographic journalism can be set up as a “good” topic standard. On one hand this evolution reveals that journalism skills are progressively mixed with social science resources knowledges and know-hows. The lessons drawn from social science in journalistic practices are to be linked to the growing part of journalists who have attended such courses. This evolution can be spotted among all the professional cardholders and, more specifically, inside the Albert Londres award : more than a fourth of the laureates have studied social science (among other social caracteristics). On the other hand, this article highlights that the growth of ethnographic journalism seems at odds with the technical standards valorized in the whole profession. In fact, these new practices (“new journalism”, precision journalism or “intimate journalism”) run counter to these technical standards. However, for the Albert Londres award, these evolutions stood out all the more since they fitted the journalistic practices it already promoted : for those journalists, the newsworthiness stands in an intellectual production (particularly characterized by writing skills, and a capacity for decoding and analyzing issues), which is free from any material and time conditions. This study is supported by an analysis based on interviews, statistics and a content analysis of 50 news coverage rewarded.
