Report

Many researchers’ findings, including on polarization, can help media and its leaders shape the journalism. The questions raised in research can help news leaders ask new questions about how journalism is done.

This report builds on the wisdom and experience of those interviewed and surveyed, and those who shape and influence the work behind the scenes.

The press will be much more effective in serving people and strengthening democracy if it learns from what researchers are learning. Among the examples and takeaways, you will find that news leaders and non-news experts alike value the opportunity to think differently about the challenges in front of them, about how local news can change and how research can ask different questions.

Why might news leaders and researchers want to inform each other’s work? And what might we learn from the ways it’s occurred so far?

When we set out to catalog the kinds of collaborative spaces between journalists and researchers, we started with an eye toward depolarization. Given our goals and what might be on the minds of many stakeholders following the U.S. elections, we wanted to highlight where it has happened.

Non-news experts share their insights to help news leaders on their challenge; the experts also gain ideas for further research and potential collaboration. We’ve been evaluating how we make this work at our summits, where the interaction between news leaders and non-news experts is a top-rated attribute.

Our suggested fixes, in order from "small potatoes" to "big fish to fry."

Here we detail what journalism can learn from other fields where professionals have endeavored to bridge research and practice — namely, medicine and education.

There are many benefits to bridging the gap between academic research and journalism. At the same time, the size of that gap should not be understated. And even more crucially, to bridge the gap, we must understand how it came to be.

Journalism research is no silver bullet. But it does offer crucial insights based on evidence and rigorous peer review, which may support news organizations more effectively than their long-standing practice of following tradition or informed hunches.