Defining and moving towards academic journalism

Above all, academic journalists play a role in proposing new ideas and helping disseminate them for wider discussion and even in provocation of debate and discourse on issues of social, importance. This is a counter response to an environment where many issues, such as the transgender debate, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), religious discourse and even less sensitive issues such has environment and climate change, have been virtually banned from discussion in many universities.

Writing for popular magazines and using alternative media is shunned by many academics who believe it is a betrayal of academic rigour and the conventional view that academics should only be writing articles in peer-reviewed SCOPUS journals or academic publishing houses.

Nonetheless academics are increasingly turning to the alternative of academic journalism as a counter to 'cheque book' journal publications and processes for by-passing peer review of articles before publishing which is running rife and where so many academic journal articles are being retracted and withdrawn because of fraudulent data or results or even worse academic misdemeanours.

In addition, not many university faculties appear to realize or acknowledge that students want to be taught by 'public intellectuals' with names they know and can access easy through the popular media. This public profile is a huge value-adding feature of academic journalism and has profiling benefits for members of faculty and the universities themselves far beyond H-index scores, rankings, ratings and citations indicators.

The key contributions in academic journalism come from the basic skills that academics master. These include language and comprehension, learning from the rigours of historical research, using primary data and organising and analysing evidence as an academic would. Speaking a second language allows one to think in different paradigms. Having the discipline of a scientific training provides focus and rigour that few people have. Academic journalists master this.

Academic journalists write about issues the legacy and even popular media do not want to cover. Mainstream journalists would often not consider the details and nuances an academic journalist will write about.

Academic journalists tend not to repeat what others have already done. They are innovative on the subjects and issues they research and report. In this way, academic journalists produce novel and original content.

This is why many successful academic journalists now get higher views that some legacy media outlets and why academic journalism will be a genre that will develop as the main publication route for teaching and research.