摘要：Opposite to the indulgent idea that the Spanish research on communication has a good health, often supported on such objective indicators as the exponential growth of the number of researchers, doctoral theses, academic reviews and editorial collections, in this article the state of the art in journalism studies is checked to conclude that it is a field in crisis. In the essay is argued that, among other reasons, this situation stems from the predominance in this field of that attitude we call descriptive intuitionalism, with a short theoretical reach, and from the shortage of the empirical research based on the social theory and the humanities. To understand this state of the art, we draw the main lines of the historical evolution of the scientific community researching in journalism in Spain, and we can distinguish up to three generations. The origins, scientific formation and interests of knowledge of the members of these generational groups, who go supporting the newly ones in the work and options taken by the precedent ones, help to clarify the reasons of that state of crisis.
