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Bridging the media-academia divide

Hasan Suroor

The time when academics and journalists inhabited two different worlds is behind us.

SPEAKING AT a gathering of academics and journalists at Oxford University recently, Timothy Garton Ash, a distinguished Oxford professor, highlighted the gulf that, he said, existed between the academia and journalism — and, in turn, fed their negative perceptions of each other. Professor Ash, who is also a respected newspaper columnist and is often teased by his academic colleagues for having "one foot in both graves," illustrated this with his own experience of the big divide.

He said: "At university selection committee meetings if someone says about a candidate that his work is `rather journalistic,' then it means a kiss of death for the candidate... and if you are sitting in an editorial meeting in a newsroom and someone says that a report is too academic then it means it goes straight into the spike!"

Many journalists would instantly recognise the first part of Professor Ash's statement. I have some very good friends in the academia but even the most media-friendly tend to be rather sniffy about journalistic writing. In academic parlance, the term "too journalistic" is a euphemism for superficial. Media courses in British universities are mockingly referred to as "mickey mouse" courses — along with hair-dressing, cookery, and fashion design. Even creative writing programmes which, many believe, are a sheer indulgence get more attention.

And if you think that a degree in journalism is what you really need to land a job in a major news organisation, think again. For, chances are that someone with a good degree in a traditional discipline — including that most "non-utilitarian" of subjects, English literature — will beat you to it.

No doubt, the academia-media divide underlined by Professor Ash exists, but things are changing. Over the past decade, there has been considerable increase in the interaction between academics and journalists because of the changing face of the media. Modern journalism with its stress on the "big picture" means that, increasingly, newspapers and television channels are seeking out academics to provide specialist analysis and opinion on the news of the day. What is called the "egg head effect" is often more marked on television as TV producers believe that viewers are likely to take a studio discussion more seriously if there is an academic on the panel. Academics are seen to lend "gravitas" that lay journalists supposedly lack.

Extended role

That, of course, is an aside. The fact is that journalism no longer sees itself as a mere dispenser of news and, in its extended role as a forum for debate around issues such as terrorism, nuclear technology, environment, global markets and IT, etc., it needs people who have expertise in these areas. The era of the "generalist journalist" is very nearly over and we are now witnessing the birth of the "academic journalist" who is better equipped — or so it is assumed — to answer the needs of the "new" journalism.

When I got my first job many, many years ago, all I was asked to do was to write a report describing the "most interesting" scenes I may have noticed on my way from my home to the newspaper office. Today, I doubt if a mere flair for writing will be enough to get a wannabe journalist a job.

"New" journalism is more about "back-grounding" and analysis. (Even weekend supplements, once the natural home of feature writers, now read more and more like extensions of the daily newspapers — sometime even heavier.) In this scheme of things, someone who can go "behind" the breaking news and is able to analyse its implications has an edge over a mere news-gatherer. Therefore, more and more news organisations, worldwide, now have trained academics on their staff. And this is where the second part of Prof. Ash's statement — that "academically" written stories tend to head for the spike — is grossly outdated. There may be newsroom jokes about the "academic" style of writing and old-fashioned reporters may privately resent the "intrusion" of academics into their traditional territory but there is no anti-academic bias. Sections of the academia remain patronising about "journalistic" writing.

However, the good news is that the days when academics and journalists inhabited what seemed like two different worlds are behind us. There was a time when it was a rare academic who deigned even to give the lowly hack the time of the day without a smirk on his face. Never mind if a lot of academic theory, especially in social sciences, was spun around facts first reported by journalists. These days, academics and journalists are more likely to find themselves on the same plane — sharing a common platform at seminars, in TV studios, or on comments pages — than even a decade ago. And this interaction is set to grow. The launch of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University last week, where Professor Ash made his remarks, is billed as a significant step by both sides to recognise each other as "partners" in the new information age. End of the "divide" then?

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