22 April 2006

Reporting research news

In journalism one must report Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. Journalists have methods to obtain this information, and I am interested in tailoring these methods to reporting research news.

A typical reader of research news expects high quality background information surrounding the news. This information gives the reader a crash course on scientific aspects of the news topic.

This raises the reporting challenge. The journalist must describe what, why and how in depth, but can not hope to have first hand knowledge in all cases.

The journalist therefore needs a way to capture expert knowledge to include as background. I'm interested in refining methods of capturing expert knowledge.

To a professional journalist, the methods will probably end up looking like "good old-fashioned journalism". But please humour me while I find out how to give researchers a good hearing in the Press.

16 April 2006

mission statement

I am interested in research and how it can be fostered. Virtually all
kinds of research interest me and I believe research should be defined
broadly to include any activity that creates knowledge.

Why should research be fostered? It's difficult to fund research,
train people in research methods and to do research.

But worthwhile.

Researchers find things out for us. They gather information with which
to make sound decisions. They discover new things. They refine the
methods that make these discoveries possible. If we lost our
researchers we would make less informed decisions, fail to discover
new things and would lack the tools to train new people to replace
them.

My aim is to raise awareness of research efforts and fuel debate about
how these efforts can be refined and improved.