The purpose of this contribution is to examine more precisely how professional journalism can contribute to deliberative communication and democracy in the European context. Which structural conditions and which factors are essential? We begin with theorizing what will be referred to as the journalism domain, i.e. the various aspects of journalism considered. We do this through a combination of media sociological, media theoretical, and political communication-oriented thinking. Then we operationalize the role of journalism for deliberative communication/democracy into a few variables, which is then paving the way for our analysis of the condition of journalism in 14 EU countries during 2000–2020. We present some results from existing national case study reports. Finally, we provide some concluding comments on how to interpret the data with a focus on the capacity of journalism to contribute to deliberative communication and democracy in the different countries.