How do policy-makers and journalists accumulate symbolic capital in terms of their strategic positioning in relation to policy making? How do they negotiate their impact on policy making across fields? How do they gain access to information, and how is this information constructed in terms of education and schooling? This paper focuses on Bourdieu's concepts of symbolic capital and field to analyse 17 interviews with former Canadian ministers of education, premiers, senior bureaucrats and journalists. This paper argues that journalism and educational policy making are separate but have structural points of convergence. The study concludes that issues of electoral and news cycles and the politics of recognition within the fields of journalism and government educational policy making are crucial to understanding what counts for common sense educational policy. (Contains 2 notes.)