Brendan R. Watson

One of the conversations at ONA was how to fosterer greater collaboration between academics and “the industry.” Never mind that journalism schools can’t even settle the tensions between academic and professional faculty who like to use the lack of understanding between themselves as an example of how the other “doesn’t get it.”

Personally, I think we’re too far in the hole to even engage in such squabbles. Certainly, academics are doing research that can inform industry practice and vice versa. And there are interesting individuals on both sides eager to exchange ideas to foster better professional practice and more relevant research.

I am starting a new project JournalismAbstracts.com, to help those individuals connect with one another. The tagline for the website will be: connecting ideas and practice. The website will hopefully synthesize research that is relevant to challenges facing the news industry in a way that makes it accessible to professionals, as well as help professionals share questions and data that might be of interest to researchers. The site will also feature jobs in academia for working journalists, and jobs in journalism for those with a research background; a widget for comparing academic programs offering master’s and doctorate degrees, with a focus on serving professionals interested in advancing their education; and other features I am still developing.

I am looking for partners in this endeavor, who have both academic and professional interests. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I will launch a website where interested parties can register. I hope to assemble a team in the next couple of months to start creating content and adding features, with the hopes of having a beta launch before the spring semester.