In that light, perhaps organizations such as Kaiser Health News or Propublica would be worthwhile models to consider: independent staffs with strong editors that provide coverage where voids exist or where collaboration with other media can leverage limited reporting staffs. That could expand coverage, with a bonus of high quality, but it would be a much different resource than an SMC. And hey, if sustainable financial support could be found (no doubt a big “if”), it might even put some good science journalists back on a regular paycheck.
Another consideration is whether any effort to increase levels of science journalism is better directed at digital as opposed to conventional outlets and what form such an effort should take.
Some of my NASW colleagues wonder about the possibility of a central clearing house with links to currently available resources at various journalism organizations, blogs, etc. It wouldn’t necessarily create new prorgrams, but could serve as a one-stop shopping site for what is already available and require regular updating. It could be based at an existing organization, avoiding the need for a new infrastructure.
We currently exist in a kind of perfect storm: Scientific discovery in both life and physical sciences is exploding, demanding both smart and critical reporting. Yet the media’s resources devoted to covering stories so crucial to society are depleted amid profound changes driven by the Internet’s disruptive impact on conventional news organizations.
But journalists on other beats face challenges too. Are we really so different from the rest of our profession that we need a dedicated Media Center to improve our lot?
This is an important conversation and I hope it will lead to efforts to strengthen and expand existing resources to meet the challenges facing science journalism.
There IS a need in the US for something like an SMC, at the very least to help the major source of news for most Americans, local TV news, do much better with science coverage...more coveraget, and better informed. I was a TV environment and science reporter in the 80s and 90s and have watched that frequency and quality suffer badly. TV stations would gobble this up. In fact, there would have to be great caution. They gobbled up way too gullibly the feeds of medical and health news often supplied by corporations or local hospitals. But for the medium through which more people get news than any other, an SMC could play a vital role improving science journalism. (to be continued in Helsinki!)
#1 Posted by David Ropeik, CJR on Fri 21 Jun 2013 at 04:43 PM
David makes a worthwhile point - local broadcast is the way many people get their news and in the mobile era, short video packages will increasingly dominate as a medium of delivering news. Short downloadable video commentary from a transparent, foundation-backed independent source of scientific perspective (say a minute of b-roll and 2-3 comments from an expert) would likely be an effective way to reach the public (if you can get it across to local news outlets that it is available). Those outlets will never hire science or environmental reporters, there is no advertising money for it, so this kind of resource would be better than nothing and reach many people who are often tuned out from more comprehensive sources of news.
More broadly however, I share Ron's questions about efforts to "improve" science journalism or educate the public. Any such enterprise will possess an agenda, however well-intentioned, and/or represent a diversion of effort away from real journalism. What is the goal here? How do you measure outcomes? Would we be better off with funding more research into science communication instead? Or education in news literacy?
#2 Posted by Dan Vergano, CJR on Sun 23 Jun 2013 at 02:10 PM
The "diversity of the American media" argument seems off point; US media may be large, but there's little diversity. And the suggestion that US reporters would not use canned quotes struck me as downright humorous.
#3 Posted by Tom T., CJR on Mon 24 Jun 2013 at 11:17 AM
"Far from adding another layer of PR to reporters’ work routines, the idea is to help them cut through the large volume of communications they already receive."
Curtis, it seems you're giving with this sentence, the same argument as your co-author: a lot of excellent resources are already doing exactly that ("help them cut through the volume"). So, rather than creating a new structure, why the SMC defenders do not help the structures already doing a good job?
#4 Posted by Francis Lacombe, CJR on Mon 24 Jun 2013 at 11:57 PM