outreach
And that’s the way it is by Paul McKellips
When I was growing up in Wisconsin, advertising revenue and circulation memo pointing out that nowadays, news Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening numbers have fallen dramatically in the organizations search, scour and source News was a religious experience. Supper, as last decade, and the numbers of writers and the web for the buzz that crowds are my parents called it, was served promptly editors have plummeted since 2006. already talking about. Our university and at five o’clock, dishes were washed and we corporate communications departments were in our seats and ready for the CBS are under immense internal pressure to News theme music by five-thirty. Great news is a great story— create mass media exposure through an If Walter didn’t say it, then it just wasn’t salacious gossip, national old-world news industry that no longer so. He reminded us of that fact at the end of exists instead of embracing the new every newscast: “…and that’s the way it is.” conspiracies, government opportunities in micro-media. The New York Times stood as the secrets and lurid mysteries. News is about storytelling. Great news flagship of print journalism. According is a great story—salacious gossip, national to the n ewspaper’s motto, first used on conspiracies, government secrets and lurid 25 October 1896, “all the news that’s fit to Last summer, CNN reported that mysteries. And what, pray tell, is the essence print” was inside. the Supreme Court had thrown out the of basic science? Uncovering mysteries. In the post-modern model of journalism, individual mandate on the Affordable Care Every day we discover new evidence and journalists, editors and publishers upstream Act. But that was wrong. A citizen blogger move closer to solving the mysteries of prepared, packaged and distributed the was the first reporter to get it right—and disease and dreadful conditions. Every day news downstream through transmission his report was viewed one million times we add another clue gleaned from a worm, towers and paperboys. Readers, listeners within an hour. Where were the New York– fruit fly, mouse or zebrafish. and viewers simply consumed the news. based journalists when Bernie Madoff’s That’s a great story! That is news. For 125 years, hard-hitting reporters and Ponzi scheme was running amok? It took We just need better presentation. Maybe
© 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. America, Inc. © 2013 Nature professional journalists worked their beats, a citizen journalist doing investigative we should stop packaging b iomedical developed sources, asked probing questions snooping to bring down that house of research news like it’s 1972 and write and produced news with an eye toward cards. The stories of the Arab Spring and shorter, more compelling stories about
npg objectivity. But somehow these p urveyors of the Syrian revolution are being covered in discovery. Maybe we should stop churning information, whom we believed to possess first-person accounts by citizen journalists out press releases in search of journalists unfailing instincts for news, a pparently with iPhones. who have left the n ewsrooms and now surf missed the coming of the Internet. The professional news-gatherers of our the web looking for news in their bedrooms. On 30 April 1995, when final restrictions time all missed the coming of the digital Maybe we should stop trying to control ‘all were lifted for carrying commercial traffic, revolution and the impact it would have the research news that’s fit to print.’ We the World Wide Web didn’t just change on the people. Perhaps they weren’t the might just turn on an entire new world of journalism: it ignited a revolution. The old- only ones. users and p ublishers. world journalistic clarity of upstream news Today’s science and research com- When we unleash our scientists, being delivered to downstream consumers municators seem to think that a vertical researchers and lab animal specialists to died. news hierarchy still exists. We still send blog, post, comment and publish, we will TV transmission towers and paper out press releases, hire PR firms to pitch reach the crowds with transparency. The routes have been replaced with free digital complex stories and post pre-packaged people are hungry for mysteries being distribution. The people, once an audience news items on our home pages, hoping solved. A global buzz will ripple through of readers and viewers, have become that a p rofessional journalist will see every culture where disease respects no crowds of users and publishers. Mass media our press release, d ecipher a white paper border, creed or economic status. has become micro-media. or read something intriguing on our Global buzz—not press releases— Viewership for evening network news has home page and then write a flattering, generates earned media coverage. And that, declined for 30 years straight. Newspaper truthful story about us. We missed the my friend, is the way it is.
McKellips is Executive Vice President of the Foundation for Biomedical Research in Washington, DC.
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