The movement to strengthen collaboration between journalists and academic scholars

Want to know an inconvenient truth about the journalism industry in America?

Ideas to address the challenges facing journalism have been available for years. The problem is, these solutions often don’t reach the people who could benefit the most.

Why? Because these solutions are put forward by academic scholars. But too often, their ideas are never seen by journalists fighting everyday battles inside of newsrooms.

That is why a group of researchers and journalists are attempting to bridge the gap between academia and newsrooms through both in-person convenings and research about the issue.

Those of us working directly within or with news organizations understand the issues plaguing the industry. Newsrooms continue to fold, resulting in an increase of news deserts across the country. Many outlets are struggling to find ways to monetize their operations, particularly those that are for-profit. And at a time when distrust of news is at an all-time high, many newsrooms continue to struggle with engaging their communities, particularly communities of color and other populations that they have historically underserved.

Academic scholars who study the journalism industry also have a strong understanding of these issues. In many cases, they have been more hyperfocused on these challenges, given the capacity challenges facing newsroom workers.

Each year, scholars produce hundreds of research articles focused on issues impacting newsrooms. For example, the most recent edition of Journalism Studies, a leading research journal for news scholars, features ten pieces covering news avoidance. The May 2024 edition of Digital Journalism, another leading journal, also has a piece focused on news avoidance. Additionally, there are other research articles within this edition focused on the use of social media platforms for news engagement, with two specific pieces focused on WhatsApp.

However, research from the academy is often not consumed by everyday journalists, according to Valerie Belair-Gagnon, an associate professor with the Hubbard School of Journalism at the University of Minnesota, and Tamar Wilner, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, in a piece for Nieman Reports.

“Journalists are frustrated with academic research on their profession and its practices, often finding it irrelevant, impractical, or inaccessible,” the authors wrote.

The concerns Wilner found in the Nieman Reports study led her to seek out scholars and journalists who wanted to see academic research become more accessible to newsrooms. As a result, Wilner developed an effort known as the Journalism Bridging Project to look even deeper into issues surrounding the gap.

“I think I’m not alone, as an academic, in looking at my work and wondering if it actually makes any difference in the newsroom. And at the same time, I think there is a lot of valuable research that gets stuck in one stage or another of the pipeline so journalists don’t hear about, or don’t understand it, or can’t implement it,” Wilner said

On September 26, portions of a white paper written by the project members will be published by the American Press Institute. This effort, which is based on research of more than a dozen journalists and scholars, will provide details on why the gap exists, as well as solutions for solving the problem.

“I wanted to make sure that as academics, we are making a difference to this crucial industry that we care about,” Wilner said.

Among the recommendations made by the authors of white paper was one that seems rather simple: more collaborations between newsrooms and scholars.

While it is true that academic research in general has struggled to connect directly with news organizations, a growing body of researchers who focus on direct interventions with newsrooms have for years focused their attention on solving the real-world issues journalists face, with the assistance of newsroom workers. These academics, who often refer to themselves as engaged scholars, have been writing work that offers solutions to these challenges for years.

The Engaged Journalism Exchange was founded by Andrea Wenzel, an associate professor of journalism at Temple University, and Jacob Nelson, an associate professor of communication at the University of Utah. Both Nelson and Wenzel have written books that directly address challenges facing newsrooms, particularly when it comes to engaging audiences. Wenzel is the author of two books focused on  community-centered and antiracist journalism, and Nelson has written a book focused on issues surrounding audience engagement.

While both Nelson and Wenzel have had their work highlighted in trade journals, other engaged scholars have struggled to build connections with people within the news industry. This was one of the motivating factors behind creation of the Engaged Journalism Exchange in 2019.

“The reason we started doing these Engaged Journalism Exchange gatherings was there weren’t a lot of places for journalists and people who spend their career researching and doing education around journalism to get together and learn from each other,” Wenzel said. “Another thing we wanted to try to do was to share some of our experiences as researchers who collaborate with journalists and share what we had learned and things that had worked well as well as things that had been really challenging. And so part of this has been trying to have candid conversations about what those collaborations look like, and about some of the most critical ingredients needed to make those collaborations valuable to both parties.”

Past exchanges, which have taken place both in person and virtually, have focused on topics such crime and elections, institutional racism within newsrooms, covering immigrant communities and developing collaborations between communities and newsrooms.

Last month, the latest exchange, which was held during the Association for Educators in Mass Communication and Journalism Conference, sought to directly deal with the issue that has impaired the ability of scholarly work to better inform and assist newsrooms. At this event, more than 40 people, including scholars, journalists and consultants, met to directly address the challenge of the gap between newsrooms and the academy.

The summit started with a preview of the white paper focused on the gap, with a conversation between the American Press Institute and Wilner. A second keynote conversation — one featuring a practitioner and scholar — explored strategies for collaborative research. Anita Li, the publisher of The Green Line, discussed how she has managed relationships with academic scholars. Additionally, Danielle Brown, who is an associate professor with Michigan State’s School of Journalism, discussed how to build trust with newsrooms when conducting engaged journalism projects.

The main purpose of the event, however, was to have dedicated practitioners and scholars interact and learn from each other. Over the course of an hour, scholars were invited to meet with four different practitioners in the room during a speed networking session.

The event also featured two “unconference” periods — where attendees set the agenda — in which practitioners and scholars came together to discuss issues of concern in both journalism and the academy. Topics discussed included funding for newsrooms and research, equity issues within newsrooms and college programs and using research and best practices to train student journalists.

“I think just hearing people talk about areas where they’ve had challenges, but also how they navigated those [challenges] and often found ways through them, has been really helpful,” Wenzel said.

The Engaged Journalism Exchange will convene again in August of 2025 at the annual convention of AEJMC. A scholarly article about the exchange has just been published in the journal Journalism.