Hey, It Is Not About Science: What We Need is Journalism
(Which means that it is truly about people)
When asked about the operation of the newsroom where she works as managing editor, Maria Balinska, from the U.S. version of The Conversation, said: “It’s a daily newsroom with editors, all of whom are journalists, and the reporters are all academics.” The statement refers to how content generation flows in the (originally) Australian project: in order to provide news, journalists go to academics seeking evidence and original context. In the end, scientists are either sources or writers; journalists are the editors. The successful formula, as noted in this Nieman Lab Review, helped The Conversation “find its place” — not to mention the relevant pieces offered to the public and the broader audience delivered to academics.
In that sense, The Conversation did a lot for science, but is it helping journalism? Of course it is — as the hundreds of editors hired in many countries (Australia, United Kingdom, USA, India, South Africa) can attest. However, different approaches are emerging and they offer new perspectives for the practice of journalism. So the question might be a different one: can science do more for journalism?
A powerful sutil distinction
One of the new projects rising up is Undark, a very recent initiative from the Knight Science Journalism Program in Cambridge, MA, headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In their self-description, Undark sends out a clear message: “Undark is not interested in “science communication” or related euphemisms, but in true journalistic coverage of the sciences.”
The emphasis on journalism, from my point of view, opens up a more diverse perspective when it comes to media products. I am big fan of The Conversation and their high-quality articles written by scientists and edited by journalists. It is a model I admire and that I plan to reproduce in my own venture in Brazil (Ambiental). But I do believe that, as journalists, we need to target a more diverse menu: video reports, long-form investigative pieces, short posts, social media management, quality photojournalism, and so forth and so on.
It is also true that science is behind a very expensive paywall (to delve deeper into this subject, I recommend reading this article), a problem that online libraries such as PLOS and numerous others Open Access initiatives are trying to address. The fact that enterprises like Elsevier— an academic publishing company that publishes medical and scientific literature— have revenues of more than 2 billion dollars per year, while journalistic startups are struggling to survive, is something that we have to discuss — as anything else that involves people’s access to knowledge.
I think it’s time for Science to do more for Journalism. We are the ones who care the most about discovering new formats to attract a higher (non-specialized) audience. In Brazil, the way I found to work on this was by creating Ambiental. And I can tell you this: We don’t want to spend a lot of energy in trying to make Science look cool — it is cool enough in our opinion. Instead, our project's personality is well-defined: Ambiental is a journalistic website. We rely on science in order to do reliable, compelling journalism.
That effort, as necessary as it is, is also impossible if not done by the joining of forces between academics and media professionals (not only journalists, but photographers, developers, video-makers and designers too). That’s why we are trying to create a sense of community in Brazil. Beyond the journalistic content, we are planning events open to the public, and we expect that, from our community, researchers and journalists can discover common interests and create other projects by themselves, regardless of Ambiental’s participation. The idea behind all the ventures mentioned above is that scientific findings are underused, which is true. From that fact, how can we create meaningful experiences for news consumers? Let’s work together and find out.
