(CLARIFICATION*) Framing Science: Matt Nisbet on the changing of the guard in science news delivery
Gatekeepers – one of those words that from the start seemed awfully wonky and formalistic – has up and come to mean a whole new thing in science journalism, journalism generally, and the way that news filters through society. It used to mean editors, reporters, and others at major media. Now it means almost anything but those people.
At his site Framing Science the busy analyst of science in society, American University’s Matthew C. Nisbet, has posted the full text of a talk he’s giving to the University Research Magazine Association. His message is that writers of such house pubs are now in the front row among science news gatekeepers with better seats than those of the old guard at newspapers and broadcast news outlets. He likens the web to one giant magazine staffed not by media professionals but the people who used to be lumped among sources for news along with the public.
Sounds to me as though, if there’s no gate anymore, then there can’t be gatekeepers either. Nisbet gets into the arrogance and elitism of the old model. He is a defender of the new “engaged” way of transferring information. Then he says it again, to wit: “Professional journalists have gotten so mired in the idea that we are guardians of all that is true and good and we know better than everybody else ; the arrogance has really been their downfall in a lot of ways.’
It’s a deeply thought essay. He says little however about other realities. These include that it is not arrogance that propels many reporters and editors to defend their jobs so much as a simple desire to, um, keep those jobs and continue providing the news with an explicit effort to do so impartially (total disinterest is usually impossible, but the effort is worthwhile). Also here is repeated discussion of the empowerment of the public and other participants in this hive news generation and the decreased transmission of “neutral” facts and concepts. He calls those working for house publications “journalists.” How, one asks, does he define the term, exactly? Is a press release journalism, and if not then why is a corporation’s or university’s controlled publication of its own story substantially different from p.r.?
I’d need to read it again a few times to be sure what to think. It appears to spend almost nothing on the salutary aspects of the old way, on what is being lost. These include professional news delivery that is largely independent of the news’s sources and is clearly labeled as such. Another is the fade of a national conversation that provides a large share of the public a file of shared information.One could go on, but I don’t want to sound arrogant.
The conference is hosted by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, publisher of the (superb actually) in-house journal HHMI Bulletin. One little difference between this meeting, and a typical workshop for old-line media reporters and editors. It says prominently at that site that a fee of $375 covers ALL food and housing for participants for three days, courtesy of HHMI. Old time reporters get freebies and favors regularly while covering the news or attending workshops, to be sure. I have spent time aboard a lot of research vessels and never paid a dime for the food or berth. Nobody’s perfectly saintly. But at least we have the good taste to try to paper it over as innocuously mumbled “discounted” room rates, “fellowships,” as just taking a ride with a source, and such!
*CLARIFICATION: I learn from HHMI that yes, the meeting participants got a super deal on housing and meals but it was no direct freebie. No extra money was budgeted to put up the meeting goers at the HHMI home. Their very nice headquarters building has rooms, they were between meetings for their fellows, and the $375, they tell me, covered all incremental housekeeping and food expenses.
- Charlie Petit
May 20th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Yikes.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:47 am
Charlie: As one of the editors who was around at the time the University Research Magazine Association (URMA) started, and even before that, I’ve always had strong feelings about these periodicals published by universities and reporting on science and scholarship on campus. But those opinions have been admittedly contradictory over the years.
The basic idea that a university could publish a magazine that serves the public well journalistically and accurately reports the science is one I’ve always supported. But actual cases of that happening, sadly, have been few and far between. What comes from most university research magazines now are basically modified marketing pieces touting this project or that, some new research facility, or the philosophic ramblings of the research leadership. What’s been missing in all of this are stories focusing on issues and controversies that make up so much of science and research, and the public is the lesser for it.
A few years ago, I was invited to give a talk at the annual URMA meeting and I lamented the fact that among the year’s worth of various university research magazines I reviewed — and there were 50 to 60 of them — I found only one such story that amounted to the magazine taking a look into controversy. I urged those present to at least include one such story in each issue. Simply put, I was handed my head for making the suggestion.
Responses included, “It’s my boss’ job to deal with controversy, not mine!” and “They don’t pay me enough to take that kind of chance and risk my job!” Clearly, these editors, representing 20 to 30 such magazines, saw themselves as something other than journalists — or at least, my idea of what a journalist is.
While Matt Nisbet and I disagree on many things, he’s probably right about the potential such magazines hold for doing good science journalism. But until the mindset among those editors shifts to the somewhat old-school mentality that “if I haven’t risked my job lately, then I’m not doing the right thing,” then these publications will remain nothing but glossy, coffee-table marketing pieces rather than examples of the new and improved journalism they could be.
And for those who argue that that such work can’t be done at universities, that’s ridiculous! We did it for more than two decades and have several dozen awards to prove it.__Earle Holland, Ohio State University
May 21st, 2010 at 11:49 am
Earle: You’re making sense, with a qualification. It’s clear that excellent and useful science writing runs in plenty of in-house publications. I named HHMI Bulletin, host of the URMA meeting, as an outstanding example. But I’d use the term “journalist” to mean, if not accompanied by a qualifying adjective such as lazy, sloppy, lap dog, etc., as implying independence and ability to cover most news without fear for one’s job as long as the story is not libelous, plagiarism, or just plain wrong. I think we’re on the same wavelength here. The sort of journalism that most mainstream media have striven to provide, including the muckraking and investigative sort, is a high form that as you say yourself one cannot expect from even the best publications devoted to covering and highlighting their own publishers’ business. That’s why one cannot entirely trust stories that fully-legitimate news outlets write about themselves.
May 26th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Charlie: I’ve always admired your work, and was delighted to meet you some years ago at AAAS. This thread compels me to respond, since I’m the current president of the University Research Magazine Association (URMA). I’m responding, however, as an individual with long-standing ties to the association and not pretending to speak for the group.
If your point is that we editors in URMA could do a better job in covering the broad waterfront of science as practiced on our campuses, rest assured that no one in our association would disagree with you. This is why we work very hard to learn from the best exemplars of science communication out there. It is true enough that there exists a wide diversity of editorial styles, policy and quality among URMA members, but of course the same can be said about what passes now for newspaper coverage of science, which as you know all too well, is appalling. Your appreciation of one member of our group, namely HHMI’s excellent magazine, HHMI Bulletin, tells me that, unlike Earle–whom I’ve known for some time now, and in fact was the person who invited him to the talk he referred to back in ’06–you see the potential that URMA publications have for communicating science at a high level of both quality and integrity. I salute that, and will tell you that the Bulletin is but one of many URMA publications that can easily justify their existence based on substance rather than flashy graphics. I’d be delighted to tell you more about these excellent magazines if you care to hear it.
As for Earle’s plaint, it’s a tired one that has rung hollow for a decade or more. He would have all of us (including the NASW) believe that he runs an independent news service that OSU is too happy to fund in toto, but I suspect you don’t believe that anymore than I–or the many people far more familiar with his shop than me–do. This said, I have admired Earle’s work for many years, and I regard him as a top-drawer professional in university-based research communications. But he’s dead wrong about URMA publications—we hold a legitimate place in science journalism, no matter how you parse the meaning of the word. In fact, it has recently been posited (by Dale Keiger, associate editor of Johns Hopkins extraordinary alumni magazine) that university magazines may be the last refuge for in-depth coverage of science and scholarship (see: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Alumni-Mags-The-Last-Refuge/23151/).
This isn’t idle speculation, Charlie, and it reminds URMA members that we face a golden opportunity to capitalize on what we do, which is to bring the good news of science and discovery to the public with all the veracity and integrity that ever marked the halcyon days of “real” journalism. We can, and should, improve, of course–and if we don’t we should be shut down, in my view. Bottom line, Earle’s contempt of us as “glossy, coffee-table marketing pieces” is a gross mischaracterization of URMA publications that speaks volumes about his ignorance of who and what we are. —Frank Stephenson
May 26th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Frank – Thanks for writing. There is little on which we, and I include Earle in that, fundamentally disagree regarding university magazines as well as ones published by independent alumni associations. I get some in the mail and almost invariably find articles to relish for the stories they tell and the new information they provide. This includes Research in Review, from your own Florida State University – right now its cover story on free will is a notable one.
Where we part ways is the labeling of various kinds of science reporting (and reporting generally). You refer to my parsing of meanings of the word journalist. That’s true, I do that. But it is not merely a fussy exercise in hair-splitting.
I don’t assume that excellent and socially beneficial science reporting and communication to the public can only occur via independent journalism (which is not something that one can expect from house publications however excellent their platforms may be). Thus I prefer that you say URMA publications hold a legitimate place in communication of science to the public, and contain a great deal of top-drawer science writing: well-reported, well-crafted prose that elicits interest from readers and conveys new and enlightening information about what scientists are doing these days. It is science writing and reporting, but ought not be described as science journalism in the same sense as science journalism is supposed to be practiced by independent news organizations that are free, when so disposed, to expose FSU’s or anybody’s research as off-base, corrupted, or wasteful.
The fact is that most science journalism, of the sort to which I put that label, is not investigative gotcha writing. A lot of it, or what’s left of it in traditional media, is purely explanatory and may even be a conscious effort by reporters and editors to shine an appreciative light on the university or other agency sponsoring research. A good deal of what runs in news outlets and what appears in URMA publications are indistinguishable in general form and style. But not all of it.
Excellence, in other words, is not the issue. Nor is honesty or ethics. But one thing that we need, on paper or via Kindles and iPads or whatever, is a continued flow of reporting from journalistic outlets free to emphasize whatever, to their reporters and editors, looks important regardless of who looks good or bad in the telling. It joins a flow that includes direct outreach from universities – and it’s easy to agree that with media struggling to right itself, it’s a good thing such outreach is increasing. Thus – keep up the good work. / Charlie