Journalism as we know it is said to be under existential threat brought about by a combination of corporatisation and technological change. This has led some scholars to ask whether it can survive. The dominant account is one of under-resourced newsrooms that are at best incapable of adapting and at worst guilty of cynically abandoning professional standards. This article challenges these empirical claims, but at the same time affirms the normative concern underpinning them. In our case – a conspiracy of high politics – journalists do not just report political news but they conspire in its outcome. So, by changing the mode of inquiry we also change the question; not can journalism survive, but how do journalists cope.