Putting A Date on News . . .
A reporter from a major U.S. daily newspaper called the other day. She was interested in my news release about a study concerning trust in relationships. You can see the release here.
She wanted to do a story about the study, but had one question: When was it published? This was the dreaded publication date question and could determine whether she did the story or not. She wouldn’t like the answer.
Here is the background: Researchers announce their findings in academic journals, which usually aren’t of interest outside their narrow fields. Thousands of these journals are published each year, and university science writers pore through them looking for the few studies that might interest the public.
But because there are so many journals, we don’t always find them right when they hit the shelves of the university library (or more accurately these days, the library’s computer server). That means some interesting studies go unnoticed for a month or longer after being published.
In this case, I reported in January on a study published less than a month earlier. When the reporter learned that the study was a few weeks old, there was short silence on the other end of the phone, and then, “Oh, that’s too old for us to report.”
It’s not the first time this has happened to me, nor will it be the last. But to me, this is one of the most ridiculous of the media’s “rules,” and gets to the heart of what really defines “news.”
Journalists argue that because the journal was published a month ago – and not today – it isn’t “new” enough to be news. But if no one knows about the results of the study, isn’t it still news to people? Or put another way: If a journal falls in the middle of the forest and no one is there to read it, was it really published?
This reporter obviously didn’t know about the study, because she asked about it. She obviously thought the results were interesting or she wouldn’t have called. That suggests that many of her readers might find the results interesting. And yet, this artificial rule created by the media prevents the public from learning about the study.
Anyone who understands academic publishing would find the media’s rule even more bizarre. Many studies wait a year or more from the time they are written to the time they actually show up in print. And the data for the study was collected even earlier. So that “new” study published in this week’s journal may be based on data that is two, three or more years old.
So tell me: What’s wrong with newspapers publishing the results a month after the journal comes out? The findings haven’t changed. The impact the study could have on people’s lives hasn’t changed. That’s really the shame about the media’s refusal to consider studies that aren’t brand new: A lot of information is being lost that could have helped people in their day-to-day lives, challenged their beliefs, or at the very least given them something to discuss at the breakfast table.
Why do reporters have this rule? I suspect it is mostly a way to deal with the mountain of new research published each day. It’s easier to say “I’m only going to consider today’s research ,” than face the task of wading through countless studies that may be weeks or months old.
But there’s something lost when the news media uses such arbitrary rules to decide what studies the public learns about. Research should be evaluated just based on its merits, and not on the date it was published.__Jeff Grabmeier
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While the story actually focuses on Cleveland-area forecasters, the same disbelief seems to permeate among their peers around the country. And judging by the feedback the PD got from readers of the story – a printout of the web version of the story and the comments it elicited ran more than 40 pages – there’s a sizeable chunk of the public content to abide by the weathercasters’ disbelief.
He pointed to the presence and influence of the forecasting giant 
Amid the holiday rush at the end of ‘08, the handful of readers of “On Research” may well have noticed that all activity ceased last month. (Then again, maybe nobody noticed!) Regardless, the fact is that we just took a few weeks off to rest and recharge and now we’re back, ready to go . . . more or less.
