Given the complexities of pressing science-related issues such as climate change or biomedical research, we need a new breed of specialist journalist who covers the intersections of science and policy. Rick Weiss, recently retired from the Washington Post, or Andrew Revkin at the NY Times, are probably leading prototypes of this desperately needed specialist. There are few other major outlets for this type of journalism, The Economist or Dave Goldston's column at Nature the exceptions.
News organizations and editors, despite budget tightening, have to prioritize the hiring and cultivation of specialists across beats. And it's not just at the science and policy intersection, but as the past two weeks' events underscore, it also matters for sectors such as the economy or foreign policy.
Yet are students interested in specializing? There's a troubling anecdote from one of our elite journalism schools that student motivation is just not there. From a segment at last week's On the Media radio program (transcript, audio above):
BOB GARFIELD: Cheryl Strauss Einhorn is an adjunct professor of financial journalism at Columbia University's Journalism School. She says that even in times like these, when finance is the story, the students of one of the nation's top J-schools just don't seem to care.
CHERYL STRAUSS EINHORN: This year they weren't even able to drum up enough interest to have two different sections of the financial journalism course. As a matter of fact, I think, all told, through the entire graduate journalism program at Columbia, that they may have had as few as four students show an interest in taking business journalism.
I do give them a questionnaire when they come in and ask them why they're taking the class. Many of the people, when they've answered this, have said that a family member has recommended that this would be good for them, or that they're just completely uncomfortable and they don't like the business section of the newspaper so they thought they would take the class and try to get themselves to have more of an open mind.
But there have been very few people who have taken the class because they've come in saying, this is where my interest is.
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A few thoughts:
1. Are there some big science-associated companies or agencies that could be solicited to start scholarships for students in this area?
2. Are there some mechanisms to train journalists in other areas on these topics? There are some outstanding environmental journalists for example...with some training/exposure to business and economics they could cross disciplines when necessary.
3. Lastly, there are certainly some outstanding bloggers in this intersection space. With some training in journalism, could they be cultivated into formal journalists in this intersection?
Sean
I would humbly suggest that one of the basic problems here is that there exist such things as "schools of journalism". To be good journalists, young people need to understand economics and science and political science and a host of topics. The journalism part is a relatively simple add-on to the basic ability to understand the subject at hand well enough to ask good questions and understand the answers given.
(And Matt, I'm an old guy, but I'm back at school two days a week right now taking an economics class so I can do a better job writing about energy issues. :-)
Seems to me that financial journalism, like science journalism, is better approached from the other direction: spend some time in the financial world (science world), then go report about it. The best science writers, in my opinion, are those who initially trained as scientists. I can only imagine that the best finance writers would be the same.