The article is devoted to the 25th anniversary of the conference “Journalism of the XXI Century”. The event is organized by the Department of theory of journalism and mass communications of St. Petersburg State University. The history of the event includes the stages caused by the development of the institute of journalism and socio-political changes in the modern world. At the first stage (“Journalism and sociology”) attention was focused on the problems of social functioning of journalism and its sociological analysis. At the second stage (“Journalism in the world of politics”), the conference began to take place within the framework of the “Days of philosophy in St. Petersburg”, which allowed to strengthen the theoretical and methodological emphasis of the discussed issues. Attention to politics became urgent due to the increasing participation of journalism in the processes of regulation of social relations and the introduction of new information technologies into professional practice. The third stage (“Journalism of the XXI century”) was a response to the challenges to the profession in the conditions of mass journalistic activity, which was expressed in attention to the problems of personality, its media education and media socialization.