Mutual Interests
“Without journalists, how would the public learn what we do? Universities cost more and more, and people understand them less and less. . . . Journalists tell the public about our research and show why it matters. They are the agents of our democracy’s confidence that ordinary people with good information can make rational choices that will benefit themselves and the rest of humankind. Journalists serve the public with their daily reports about our studies of flu vaccines and voting patterns and hominid fossils. But they also serve us. Every news story mentioning a professor's research is a small strut supporting our mission.”
—Harry R. Lewis, author and professor of computer science, Harvard.
Part of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s roundtable discussion
of “Academe and the Decline of News,” Nov. 15, 2009 (recommended!)
Part of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s roundtable discussion
of “Academe and the Decline of News,” Nov. 15, 2009 (recommended!)
Editor’s Note: News we can use.
• WORD CARTOONIST: Announcing the launch of Nate Pratt, the WORD’s new occasional editorial cartoonist. Click here.
CALLING ALL UTAH STATE U. JCOM ALUMS: Where are you? We're updating our alumni list. Please send your current position, title, contact info (including email), graduation year and any news to ted.pease@usu.edu.
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But let's not forget to subject all that academic research to the same journalistic scrutiny we would give to any other piece of information about which we were writing. I have seen too many university press releases printed and broadcast verbatim (or very close to it) by news organizations. That's not journalism -- that's just being a PR mouthpiece.
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