Note: an experiment with Storify export
My (belated) entry in the March Carnival of journalism. The theme: how do we measure impact?
Just as we need to be careful what we wish for, we must choose carefully before establishing metrics. From The Guardian‘s Simon Caulkin (emphasis added):
What gets measured gets managed – even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so…
Quality guru W Edwards Deming went further, putting ‘management by use only of visible figures, with little consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable’ at No 5 in his list of seven deadly management diseases. Henry Mintzberg, the sanest of management educators, proposed that starting ‘from the premise that we can’t measure what matters‘ gives managers the best chance of realistically facing up to their challenge.
What matters? What is the role of journalism, our purpose, our challenge?
I don’t think that America’s news media have been given the gift of the First Amendment so that moguls can negotiate monopoly rents into millionaire status. I don’t think that America’s news media have been given the gift of the First Amendment in order to glorify celebrity culture (think Kim Kardashian, for example).
I do think America’s news media have been given the gift of the First Amendment to speak truth to power, to give voice to the powerless, to act as a watchdog on public institutions — all things that matter but that are hard to measure and even harder to monetize.
The Three Little Pigs. Re-imagined.
And which I can’t embed cuz I’m on WP.com and TheGuardian doesn’t have shortcodes.
The world has changed a lot in my lifetime. I typed on an IBM selectric when I was in journalism school. Shot stills with a heavy 35mm Nikon. Used xacto knives and wax to paste up newspapers and magazines … and that was cutting edge because it was cold type!
This is part of TheGuardian’s ongoing series on Open Journalism.
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Academics and researchers who support open access to research were able to take a (short) victory lap on Monday. Legislation that would have prevented federal agencies from publishing publicly-funded research results without the approval of the originating journal died after Dutch publishing giant Elsevier pulled its support.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the Research Works Act (HR 3699, emphasis added) would have prohibited
a federal agency from adopting, maintaining, continuing, or otherwise engaging in any policy, program, or other activity that: (1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any ["research funded in whole or in part by a federal agency"] without the prior consent of the publisher; or (2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the author’s employer, assent to such network dissemination.
The proposed legislation contradicted the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy (2008) which requires that NIH-funded researchers submit their manuscripts to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central “no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.”
My entry in the February Carnival of journalism. This month’s question comes from Steve Outing: “What emerging technology or digital trend do you think will have a significant impact on journalism in the year or two ahead? And how do you see it playing out in terms of application by journalists, and impact?”
“Designing a communication tool as a work-around to problems resulting from the organizational structure imposed when someone decided lean manufacturing was just the ticket for a IT service company is crazy!” I fumed to two colleagues at lunch after reading a paper proposed for an international conference. “It’s enabling dysfunctional management!”
Both chuckled, and one (she’s a sociologist) pointed out that the effort reflects an unstated assumption that “technology” can “fix” problems that are social in nature. The other (a newly minted PhD) wondered if this faith in technology’s omnipotence is uniquely American.
