In North America, the period spanning the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century is characterized by the decline of the cottage-industry partisan press, which is replaced by a commercial, information-oriented one. This period played a founding role in modern conceptions of journalism. Indeed, the criticisms aimed at the press during this period are amazingly close to those observed today: they make reference to the new style of journalism, the speed of information transmission, newspapers’ financial difficulties, the confusion of genres, journalists’ competence or the lack thereof... This thesis provides both a systematic inventory and a thematic analysis of an as yet little-studied corpus of texts: articles critical of the press, published between 1870 and 1909 inclusively, in North American magazines providing discussion and analysis of the news. The aim of the study is to describe the tensions that arise between different authors when opining on the changes currently affecting the production of newspaper text, the organization and operation of the press, and the social environment in which journalism is practiced. To this end, a thematic analysis of their criticisms is proposed with a view to providing an overall quantitative and qualitative picture of the situation. 39 different themes emerge from this analysis and are used to classify the criticisms, which are then reinterpreted in order to identify the key issues involved in journalism’s task of social construction, a job that is never completed, but is the result of a constant dialectical relationship between the practice of journalism and its societal reception. The central issues raised in the critical discourse on the press are shown to be, at various levels, part of the very process of structuring this dialectical relationship in time. Four of these processes are deemed particularly relevant in order to theorize this relationship: the professionalization of journalism, the commercialization of the press, the ever-increasing role of the media in communication, and the democratization of society. Interpreted in the light of these processes, the various stands taken by the authors examined are summarized in the form of well-defined types of discursive positions. By the arguments they adduce, these positions alternate between the moral and pragmatic domains and thus define the entire spectrum of public expectations with respect to journalists. These expectations are largely regarded as constituting a public-communication contract which governs discourse in the public domain, journalism being regarded as one of the discursive practices for conceptualizing the dynamics of this contract.