Back from Tempe....

Well, I actually made it back from Tempe. But more important than getting back, I survived my time in Tempe.

We spent mucho time learning about regression, correlation and several other social science methods useful in journalism.

That all got me thinking.

My friend Allison is a Ph.D sociology student at the University of Colorado in Hippieville. We've spent a few e-mails talking about social science and journalism. The other day, I whined that if newspapers fail, who else is going to do this kind of work?

Her response:

"A lot of people do this kind of work. It just doesn't go as public as a story the Dallas News does. So, we start making it MORE of a priority to get research out to the public. There's definitely a movement towards this right now, but it's more
towards getting research about a particular issue to the practitioners
who work in that area, not the whole general public."

To me, this is the very problem. Social scientists write for other social scientists. Academics write for academics. It doesn't matter if academia starts trying to find more ways to publicize their work --- it's still going to be written for other academics.

During the camp, Steve Doig told of a story where a journalist presented his findings to an academic, who was astounded. "I never knew newspapers could do work like this," he said. As I remember the story, and forgive me if I'm a little off, the academic was planning to do the same work, but was going to take a year to apply for grant, start figuring out a framework, on and on and on.

Journalists can do social science-type work and make it palatable to the general public. But this kind of work dies in a compressing newsroom environment.

So this is my depressing thought for the day. I guess I really don't have a point to all of this, other than my hope we can find a way out of this current environment.