New Forum article on political science and journalism

I have an article in the new issue of The Forum with John Sides of George Washington University and The Monkey Cage about how reporters can use political science to inform and improve their reporting:

How Political Science Can Help Journalism (and Still Let Journalists Be Journalists)

Political scientists frequently lament the media’s neglect of our research. Although reporters should have a basic understanding of the field, it is not reasonable to expect them to restate the conclusions of academic research on a daily basis. Moreover, it is not always clear how research findings apply within the conventions of political journalism, which is context-specific and episodic in nature. In this article, we propose an approach that would bring more political science to journalism while respecting the professional norms and organizational constraints of news organizations. Although academic research is not always conducive to the demands of the news cycle, political science provides a novel perspective that could improve reporting in five respects: putting episodic developments in a structural context; providing new angles on the news; countering spin about the effects of events by elites; better describing historical trends and comparisons; and identifying known unknowns in politics.

The article can be downloaded here from The Forum (free registration required) or you can get the PDF directly from my academic website -- hope you'll check it out. I also recommend taking a look at the rest of the issue on "Press, Politics, and Political Science," particularly Greg Marx's essay on why journalists haven't moved quickly to adopt lessons from political science (which I read and commented on in draft form).

Comments

[Rob]

It's off the subject, but I'd like to say a word of thanks to Berkeley Electronic Press for permitting free downloads--though I'd quibble that the need to register each time is a deterrent and the fact that the registration doesn't contemplate an individual might want to read it is a further deterrent. (The solution is to treat yourself as a non-profit and "other," but everything about their registration form seems to ignore an individual unaffiliated reader.)

BE Press's generous approach to downloads is in marked contrast to most academic publication sites, where downloads can cost anything from $5 to $32 or more for each article. One can't help wondering why. The academics who write the articles aren't paid for them--other than by their employers, of course, since scholarship and writing are considered part of the job description. There's no cost of printing or mailing or distribution for online articles. So what's left? Server costs? Minimal, and I'm sure universities could host these academic journals without charge. Costs of the editorial staff? How significant can such costs be? How many paid staff does it take to produce an academic journal, and how many of such people could be replaced by unpaid academics who one would expect to treat the time needed to produce a journal as as much a part of their commitment to scholarship as their own writing and commenting and peer review?

To the extent that there are modest costs of online distribution of articles, why shouldn't these be assumed by the universities who presumably feel the scholarship represented by academic writing is a positive good--otherwise they wouldn't already be subsidizing the writing of the articles, which is much the greater expense? And btw, the universities are paying the costs of these things one way or another--in my suggested system, by giving server use and paying modest staff costs of the journals, and in the present system, by paying for the subscriptions that pay for the journals.

The bottom line consequence of the prevailing charges for online distribution of academic articles is to make them available only to other academics, whose institutions pay for their subscriptions, and in the case of some publications, to journalists, who are given free access. But interested individuals are out of luck. That seems odd and unfortunate--though for many academic authors, maybe limiting the audience isn't a bug, it's a feature.