SJ Mercury News, FUTURITY, aggregator and rewriter of press releases, moves into a vacancy left by shrinking press corps
This is a little bit awkward, posting on a story in which yours truly is quoted. Yesterday the San Jose Mercury News‘s Paul Rogers emailed, and then called, about a story he was working on. It is in this morning. The news is that a consortium of public affairs shops at 35 major research universities has gone into non-profit business as Futurity. Its editors take press releases selected by the members as ones they think merit wide public attention. They edit them a bit and put them on one site. They hope that on line news aggregators such as Yahoo and Google will in turn post them and give them wider circulation.
Also carrying the news – before Rogers got it - is the site Inside Higher Ed, where Scott Jaschik writes it up.
This is, Rogers reports, all because so few reporters at established news outlets – newspapers mainly – still cover science, especially science journalism other than on health and consumer medicine. A press officer at Stanford tells Rogers her office would far prefer to, as in the old days, send releases to reporters and see a steady fraction of the news they contain make it to the public that way. But the mailing lists have become short.
Sign of the times, and not the only one. A similar effort to go straight to the public, in an attractive on line package, has been underway for some time at the National Science Foundation‘s Science360 news service. site. A look at the two sites finds one press release-based story in common: a UC Berkeley report on the shifting native ranges of birds as climate changes.
- Futurity: Birds fly the coops when climate shifts ;
- NSF Science360: Sierra Nevada Birds Move in response to Warmer, Wetter Climate ;
But the stories look decidedly different. Futurity’s carries no explicit hint at the top who wrote it and at the bottom provides a link to the UCBerkeley news center, but not to the original release. By contrast, Science360 uses only the top few grafs at its site, then directs readers to read the rest on the original press release – written in this case by Cal press officer Sarah Yang.
As I put press releases routinely on this site it’s pretty clear I think press releases are fully entitled to public circulation. This is in order to let people see which reporters use such things as tip sheets to get them started on their own reporting and angles, and which just rewrite the info (either due to time pressure, laziness, or something else…). The members of Futurity, by and large, include institutions with reputations for well-written and clearly explanatory press releases. But one does think that Futurity ought to make it much clearer – as Science360 does by linking straight into such releases – who wrote the original stuff and, by implication, did so for reasons of institutional self-interest and inherent bias. Press releases can and often do carry real news, and in professional and ethical style. In aggregate, they serve reporters and the public in an essential way. However: They may be science writing. They are not independent journalism that seeks (if not always successfully) to get wide opinion and angles on the news. This is not a fine point. It is essential that the distinction be clear.
One possible move Futurity might make toward greater clarity of provenance: Bylines with institutional affiliation. Why not at the top of this instance have put “By Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley Media Relations.” ? And link it not merely to the p.r. shop but to the specific version that it released.
See Also:
- At the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire, science writer David Brooks reacts to this news at his Granite Geek blog. He supports the move and regrets only that none of his nearby universities are in the Futurity network. And, he writes, he already links at his blog to press releeases from the University of New Hampshire and Plymouth State University.
Grist for the Mill (with different ways of saying the traditional daily science press is in shambles) :
Duke University Press Release which says, remarkably, that Futurity offer direct access to research news “with no ads, no interruptions, and no agenda.” (Italics added) ; Penn State Press Release ; Univ. Texas – Austin Press Release ; Univ. Southern California Press Release ; Emory University Press Release ; University of Rochester Press Release ; … and probably several more out there.
Charlie Petit
September 16th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Regarding problems with university press releases, worth checking out Gary Schwitzer’s recent blog posting: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/schwitz/healthnews/2009/08/beware-when-a-s.html
September 16th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Charlie: One can applaud the effort the Futurity folks are making to shore up what they see is a deficit in science writing. Granted, there are fewer staff journalists on the beat these days so setting up another clearinghouse for university science stories would seem a good thing. But the system now in play allows an editor at the site to revise the institution’s submitted story with no check-back with the original author to insure that the revision is still accurate. Without that, there’s no way the original PIO writer can assure the researcher that what’s being sent to the public via Futurity reflects the original work. That’s the reason that Ohio State is not among the institutions listed as contributors to Futurity.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Hi Earle,
I understand, and have to add: welcome to what journalists face all the time. Editors should always check back with writers on final copy. That is a “should” with all the weight of a dentist saying we should brush our teeth twice a day and floss at least once. Sometimes it happens! And writers always hope wistfully for total control over their copy’s fate. Fat chance. So perhaps you are describing one ironic way in which Futurity treats public affairs writers just like freelancers in honest-to-god journalism – one sends in copy to a publication, hopes for full feedback, and no matter how much conversation ensues still crosses one’s fingers over what is published under one’s name. And then one hopes that sources, some of whom may not have wanted to talk in the first place and got some big promises for doing so, will understand when it comes out awry.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Charlie: Yes, the irony is clear and many of us PIOs who also freelance understand it clearly. However, there is a difference in the sense that Futurity argues that its role is to get university research to the public directly, bypassing the news media, for the benefit of the public and the institutions doing that work. But if the content of the abridged releases is inadvertantly changed such that it is now inaccurate, that serves neither the public nor the institution, and the individual scientists will be the first to say so and ignore all future calls. If the PIO philosophically is supposed to be supporting his institution’s researchers, it seems risky to me for the PIO to accept a lack of fact-checking and review. At least the freelancer gets paid one way or another. But PIOs often only have one chance to convince researchers to participate in the news/news release game. If they blow that too often, they’re out of work.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:57 am
[...] so perturbed science journalists. Futurity’s appearance on the science journalism scene led to a brouhaha among that much endangered species, professional science [...]
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:40 am
I understand and welcome to what journalists face all the time. Editors should always check back with writers on final copy. That is a “should” with all the weight of a dentist saying we should brush our teeth twice a day and floss at least once. Sometimes it happens! But not as often as it should.
So perhaps its describing one ironic way in which Futurity treats public affairs writers just like freelancers in honest-to-god journalism – one sends in copy to a publication, hopes for full feedback, and no matter how much conversation ensues still crosses one’s fingers over what is published under one’s name.