I’ve been reading through this paper (it’s a PDF, FYI) on the use of social media by journalists during the Penn State scandal. There’s one thing in here that jumped out at me, though, and it needs addressing.
There’s a section in which the authors discuss the phenomenon of journalists promoting others’ work and expressing surprise that they’d do this. Their premise is that they can’t understand why one journalist would promote another when they’re in competition.
The thing is, with two exceptions (trying to get scoops on immediately breaking news, and potential competition for the same job), they aren’t. Journalists aren’t academics; it’s not a vital journalistic impulse to be the first one to present an idea the way it is in the academic world. For years, journalists — in print as well as online — have nodded to their colleagues’ work. Further, while the market is not infinite, there’s very little concern regarding scarcity, especially in a niche field (albeit a very, very large niche) like sports journalism. If I read a piece by Sara Ganim on the Sandusky investigation, it’s not going to prevent me from reading a piece by Gregg Doyel. We read multiple journalists’ work on the same story for a reason; we want to get multiple viewpoints on a subject. As such, journalists themselves are not in competition with one another on a personal level… and, in fact, quite frequently the act of promoting another journalists’ work is in and of itself a means of promoting the content of one’s own. (By which I mean the journalist promoting the work is often saying either “See, this person agrees with me” or “This person doesn’t agree with me, but our differences generate a valid discussion”.)
Now, news outlets are in competition, which brings up a separate beef I have with the conclusions of this segment of the study. Completely missed in the study is the fact that many of the references to “promoting the competition” the authors refer to are in fact colleagues at the same outlet promoting one another. (For example, during that time frame you might see Brett McMurphy linking to a story by Gregg Doyel; they both worked for CBS at the time.) The study failed to take affiliation into account, and thus assumed all journalists were individual actors when they aren’t.
It’s an interesting piece of research, but hampered both by an inexplicable lack of understanding of the field and by a mistaken belief that journalists behave the same way academics do. Academics are generally a suspicious and paranoid lot, and outside of a given research team are prone to avoid collaboration for fear of having their work co-opted; journalists, on the other hand, are largely a fraternity (especially given their propensity to switch employers), and feed off one another in a symbiotic relationship.
Edit: I forgot another thing here. A lot of the promotion of one journalist by another involved, and involves, columnists directing readers to the reporting of another journalist. Columnists and reporters are two entirely different species, and in fact a columnist directing the reader to initial reporting is, ah, no different than an academic directing readers to previous studies. I’m amazed that connection wasn’t made by this paper’s authors.
Also, I forgot to link the paper in question; that’s now fixed.
