AEJMC Newspaper & Online News Division The academic-professional "chasm"

[John Russial]

There are quite a few of us out here who do and publish research that  
is heavily professional in focus and topical, and we try to write in  
English. The fact that the stuff we publish often has some statistical  
analysis doesn't have to be a barrier, which some folks seem to think  
it is. Many reporters have, or should have, a basic familiarity with  
statistical concepts (Remember Phil Meyer and Precision Journalism?),  
and that's often all you need to understand a good bit of the research  
published. Even if you're not comfortable with statistical concepts,  
if we do our job well and write clearly, it should be fairly  
accessible to journalists as well as academics.

John Russial
Former longtime journalist, current longtime academic.