The San Jose Mercury News reports:
Concerned that journalism's economic problems are reducing Americans' understanding of science, medicine and other research, 35 of the nation's top universities -- including Stanford and UC-Berkeley -- on Tuesday announced they will feed their own accounts of their discoveries directly to top news sites on the Internet.
Under the plan, the universities have formed what is essentially their own nonprofit wire service, called Futurity, to provide articles to popular Web sites such as Yahoo News and Google News, along with MySpace and Twitter."We've been really concerned. Our preference would be to have the level of coverage of science and research that we enjoyed for decades," said Lisa Lapin, assistant vice president for university communications at Stanford.
"But the major news organizations haven't had the resources to provide that independent, objective look at what we are doing. It's been declining." ...
That gives some journalists reasons to be concerned.
"Any information is better than no information," said Charlie Petit, a former science reporter at U.S. News & World Report and the San Francisco Chronicle.
"The quality of research university news releases is quite high. They are rather reliable," he added. "But they are completely absent any skepticism or investigative side."
Petit, who puts out the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, a daily weblog published by MIT, said the university-written content should be clearly labeled so the public is aware of the difference between it and stories written by independent journalists. ...
"It's ironic that we have fewer writers in our major media focusing on science, while we have ever more issues that have a science base -- from climate change to the health care debate, stem cells, evolution and swine flu -- many of which are very controversial," said Cristine Russell, a former Washington Post science reporter who is president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
As for the new university consortium, she said: "This can be a really good source of information for students and others who are looking for information. But it does not replace the independent news media."
Gary, I am really curious about your opinion of this. Is Futurity.org a "news service" or a "zinged-up press release service"? Trying to decide myself.
Steve,
Ah, the semantics of it all.
Many universities, including my own, use the term "news service" to describe their PR operations.
Is it a wire service? Is PRNewswire a wire service?
I thought the San Jose Mercury News story did a good job of explaining why it's happening and what that might mean.
But I do like your "zinged-up press release service" label!
Gary Schwitzer
"Any information is better than no information," said Charlie Petit, a former science reporter at U.S. News & World Report and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ah, that would be no.
The university news services have pretty much degenerated into a tout shop. To confuse them with a real news organization is, sadly, a joke.
Incorrect information and hyperbole about university research is NOT better than no information...
What Bill said. There is some serious tone-deafness in announcing this so soon after the Woloshin-Schwartz paper in Annals suggesting that university news services are trustworthy WRT to science & medicine based reporting.
I don't like the sound of this. How is it different from canned news releases? Sure there are people like Earl Holland, from Ohio State University, who work hard to get the science communicated right, but I don't think he is representative. In many institutions, there is far too much overlap with marketing involved.
I have to worry about Petit's comment. "Any information is better than no information." Really...that's disappointing coming from the Knight Science Tracker. Maybe he is too rooted in the old boys network and on some issues, he has lost objectivity.
Erratum: substitute "untrustworthy" for "trustworthy."
Laura: Thanks for the kind words. For what it's worth, Ohio State University is not participating in Futurity. I have some serious problems with the process underway there regarding their modification of stories and informed them that will will not take part.
Dan: You might want to check out the CJR/The Observatory piece I did on the Annals report. Find it at http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/to_report_or_repeat.php?page=all.
Earle
Earle,
Thanks for the link. I don't necessarily disagree with your specific criticisms, but my own perspective from working in an AMC -- buttressed by Gary's work here and on HNReview -- is that the press releases from AMCs are generally unhelpful, to put it mildly. I agree that even if this correct, the concept hardly excuses journalists from exercising their critical faculties, and doing their due diligence, but the same commercial entanglements that seem to facilitate many of the problems Gary covers here are at the root of AMC press releases, IMO.
Dan:
Here, as well as other institutions with medical centers, there are information/public affairs operations serving that part of the university. My operation does some reporting on medical research but so does the office of Med Center Communications, and I no longer have the ability/authority to oversee their research releases as I once did. I would argue, in probable agreement with you, that many of the communications offices supporting med centers are primarily aimed at supporting marketing efforts. That's not what we do in my operation that covers the entire university.
Earle