On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:15, Rob Myers <[email protected]> wrote: > That would be disastrous. In the UK this would preclude investigating > anyone who has anything to do with the state in order to avoid > endangering the university's funding. And in general it would turn > journalism from the investigation of truth (or at least matters of > popular interest) into just another academic postmodern solipsism. >
Say what you like about academia, but one of the things I most enjoy about reading academic journals is that there are absolutely no mentions of booze-addled Premier League footballers, Pete Doherty or Amy Winehouse's crackwhore antics, endless speculation about "what the government will announce" or coverage any of these seemingly surname-deprived people I see on the front of magazines (Cheryl, Paris, Britney, Nicole, Kerry, Katie, Peter etc.). I've never seen an academic journal attempt to incite the barely literate into attacking paediatricians. They also don't spend much time arguing about whether mediocre comedians should be fired because stupid people were offended by a phonecall. They don't spend much time bidding for ghoulish 'death rights' on a talentless Big Brother star. Nor do they print churnalism produced by PR flacks and endorsed by shady quacks and pseudoscientists. If someone claiming that gravity is just a scam by aliens, they don't put on the pretense of balance. In all the academic journals I peruse, I've yet to see Barley-esque blog posts about "finding oneself" by jet-setting of to India printed there for reasons only of nepotism. None of the academic journals I tend to read are managed by marketing arseholes who spend their days reading shitty blogs filled with dumbed-down, Digg-friendly top ten lists about SEO and "viral social media". They don't find the need to get Gravity theorists and Intelligent Falling theorists in equal measure for 'fairness' or 'balance'. They also rarely ever need to uncritically print Number 10 or White House press releases for fear of losing access. Academic papers which don't clearly define what they are talking about tend to get rejected, while the media are free to use moronic generalisations like "the public sphere" (a term so broad that it covers absolutely everything except hiding under a duvet all day) or "political correctness gone mad!". They don't waste tremendous amounts of money sending outside broadcast units out to stand around outside, say, a school to illustrate a report about that school. The difference between academia and the media is that while academia publishes the odd postmodernist screed every so often, the media actively practice the philosophy. Who gives a shit about the truth when you can print lazy churnalism and get page views? Who gives a shit about the scientific types who will get their panties in a knot about it? That just gets us more page views, and who are they to say they have the Absolute Truth (scoff!)? Who gives a monkeys about living up to our old-fashioned belief in getting the most important issues of the day summarised for the consumption of readers when we can fill our pages with Jade Goody, endless Diana speculation and articles about how social networking sites cause cancer. There's a reason why journalists are generally considered to be on the same level of trustworthiness as those no-win-no-fee lawyers with TV adverts, PR gurus and investment bankers. And academic journals tend to cover the things I'm interested in at a depth much greater than that of even the "intelligent" media - the number of times I've cringed as someone on Radio 4 has tried to "summarise the history of Western philosophy... you've got about thirty seconds!" on otherwise excellent programmes like In Our Time. There are things you can't fit into a 500 word column or a half-hour slot. As for actually getting academics to become journalists, it's impractical, but not because of the state funding issue. The state already funds the BBC and Channel 4, who produce reports critical of the government. And those in universities have published research that is critical of the government. So long as you set the system up right, with checks and balances, I'm not sure why there would be a problem. Of course, those trained up to be professional researchers might have no special knack for doing what journalists do. Certainly, more niche beats like science, technology, religious affairs, reviews of literature, maybe international relations will be supplemented and maybe replaced by academic bloggers. And a good thing too: almost everything I read in the newspaper about anything I know about turns out to be wrong in some way. The same is no doubt true for things I read in the newspaper about things I don't know about. The other thing that will probably happen is that there will be less redundancy in reporting. In terms of radio, I listen to a few BBC podcasts, and supplement them with a few NPR shows from the US, and even a show from Australia. I'm not sure why the BBC don't syndicate some of these programmes - probably because they fear getting angry letters from people saying that they don't like listening to Ozzie accents. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
