The authors argue that journalism's uncertain identity in academia has made it vulnerable to unreflective instrumentalism in the digital era. They show how instrumentalism intertwined with the digital sublime constitutes a rhetorically resonate rationale for closing a journalism school. Evidence comes from documents and testimony associated with discontinuance of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado. Vulnerability of the school became apparent in its own Advisory Board recommending closure. The authors warn against stakeholders in journalism education internalizing the fear and opportunism implicit in a discourse of the digital sublime, a discourse ultimately in service to discontinuance. (Contains 28 notes.)