What audiences really want: For journalists to connect with them as people

“The research-practice gap in journalism: Why it exists and how we can address it.” By Tamar Wilner et al., Journalism Bridging Project.

“Academia and journalism: Two different worlds? How scientific institutions can successfully collaborate with journalistic organizations.” By Leonie Wunderlich, Sascha Hölig, and Meinolf Ellers, in Journalism.

We close with two reports about the divide that exists between the academic world and the journalistic one, and how we might foster more dialogue and collaboration between the two — which, as will be clear to any long-term reader of this newsletter, is one of the main reasons that we started RQ1 almost five years ago.

The first is a white paper by a new initiative called the Journalism Bridging Project that was published in partnership with the American Press Institute and features a large cast of journalists and academics as contributors (full disclosure: we both were involved in this initiative — Mark as a section editor, and Seth as an editor-at-large). The report seeks to clarify why there is such “palpable disconnect” between academics and journalists, and why it matters to learn from other fields and build new mechanisms and incentives for cross-pollination and coordination to overcome such a persistent and problematic research/practice divide.

“The simplest way to bridge the gap,” the authors suggest, among other recommendations, “is by making sure journalists and academics spend time in the same rooms. Conferences can bring professionals from both worlds together to exchange ideas. Programming could include panels that mix scholars and journalists, summaries of research insights and ask-me-anythings between journalists and researchers on key topics. Universities can leverage relationships with alumni and neighboring newsrooms to bring research and practice together more.”

The second item in this vein is a study by Wunderlich and colleagues. It takes up “the question of how scientific institutions can establish long-term collaborations with journalistic organizations,” toward the goal of improving knowledge transfer between the two fields. The authors describe an initiative (#UseTheNews) that aimed to encourage news use and news literacy among young people, but rather than focus on the content of the initiative, the researchers wanted to investigate how the relationship unfolded between the scientific and journalistic partners.

Overall, they found that fruitful cooperation could occur under the right conditions, and they highlighted four main pieces of advice for how researchers can broker long-term relationships with newsrooms: (1) Build a core team that manages the organizational and communication-related aspects of the collaboration (including team leaders representing both the academic and practice sides); (2) establish core values that will guide how roles are defined and managed (e.g., what principles around transparency, data quality, etc., are sacrosanct to one or both sides?); (3) ensure regular exchange between all partners to maintain initial momentum over a long period; and (4) clarify how success is defined and measured.