When Sue Robinson worked as a newspaper reporter, she would sometimes get phone calls from academics whose lines of inquiry were far afield from the reality of the profession.
As one example, one researcher wanted to know how much influence advertisers had over her copy. The answer was none: She abided by the strict separation between editorial content and the business side, known then as The Wall.
So, she said, they were “very disdainful” in the newsroom. “[We] were like, ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re in an Ivory Tower, and I’m like, here on the ground, trying to get this news out,’” Robinson said.
Now, as a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Robinson is the researcher calling newsrooms. This time around, she is working to bridge the gap between scholars and journalists.
What Robinson has realized, in making the big leap, is that the divide between academia and newsrooms is worth bridging. After all, most journalists and journalism researchers are intensely invested in making journalism better.
In fact, over nearly a century, researchers have worked to better understand journalism and its challenges. Scholars have shed light on how the news frequently perpetuates racial stereotypes, how “balanced” reporting furthers false claims about climate change, how transparency can engender trust, and much more.
At the same time, the news industry’s challenges have deepened into crises, including revenue loss, layoffs, deepening distrust from members of the public, dangers to reporters’ safety and governmental incursions on freedom of the press.
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.
What is the gap?
Unfortunately, there is a deep divide between journalism research and journalism practice. In many ways, this is ironically about poor communication. That is, scholars’ knowledge gains often don’t make it into the hands of journalists, or are not expressed in a way that can have an impact. Competing priorities in academia and industry can widen the divide, but at its base the gap consists of a tradition of the two parties failing to communicate. The two sides also tend to highlight differences instead of finding common ground.
The gap is nothing new. As long as there has been research into journalism, there has been a divide between the theoretical and practical. But for much of the 20th century, the gap between researchers and journalists seemed less wide than it is now. For example, after its founding in 1908, the University of Missouri’s journalism school encouraged professors performing research to also work in newsrooms. After World War II, many of the applied communication scholars who had worked in the U.S. Office of War Information went on to found university journalism programs that blended theory and practice.
However, changes in academic attitudes and incentive systems began to widen the gap in the decades that followed. In a 2022 Nieman Lab survey, journalists indicated that research does help make journalism better for audiences and society. But they said researchers often ask the wrong questions, and saw academics as “outsiders” who don’t understand how journalism works.
At its core, the mismatch exists because each field has different priorities. Journalists seek applicable information that will help them figure out how to do their reporting now, as the media environment’s sands shift beneath their feet. Academia prioritizes the development of theory and the accumulation of empirical evidence, without a strong emphasis on immediate applicability. The different priorities lead to clashing practices: For example, journal articles usually fail to highlight practical implications, and are often locked behind paywalls.
Yet there is a growing corps of journalism researchers who are working to answer the questions that matter for journalism today, and to do so in a way that can make a difference. In short, they are starting to bridge the gap. These include researchers like Sue Robinson, who gets on the ground with newsrooms, engaging with journalists to train them in engagement methods. Other university-based efforts include initiatives and centers that have found creative ways to publicize research findings and connect with the intended audience — news organizations. For example, the Center for Media Engagement publishes its research as publicly available white papers and reaches out to trade outlets for coverage before its researchers then write up studies for journals. Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis, the professors behind the RQ1 email newsletter, regularly summarize some of the most interesting and useful journalism research for an audience of both academics and non-academics.
How can we strengthen the support for current and emerging researchers like this, and increase the impact of their work? To accomplish this, what are the roles of universities, news organizations and funding bodies?
Why this report
This report seeks to answer these questions and more. We wrote this report with the aim of imagining a better future for journalism: sustainable, robust, serving the needs of all sectors of society. We imagine a future where evidence, data and peer review support decision-making in journalism, improving the industry and our democracy.
To take on such an expansive vision, we’ve necessarily had to limit the report in some ways: To start with, we focus on the problem as it exists in the United States. In addition, while academic studies also have their place as the topic of journalists’ reporting, here we’re concerned with what research can tell us about how journalism should be practiced and produced. Given that focus, our conversations with academics mostly centered on those who research in the disciplines of journalism and mass communications — though we acknowledge the relevant research that goes on in other fields, from sociology to management. Finally, we focus here on what we see as a key divide: between those who practice or produce journalism, and those who carry out research in academic settings. Occasionally we’ll consider the contributions of people in adjacent roles, such as academics who focus on teaching, or researchers outside of academia, but they are not the focus of this report.
