I have grown to despise journalists. If it wasn't for my narcissistic love of being interviewed and its generally positive effects for helping me better organize my thoughts, I would just as soon not talk to them. At this point I will refer you to this article written about me in The Gainesville Sun by a journalism student at the University of Florida.

If you read it, you'll probably think to yourself... wow, someone wrote an article about Alex, weird. Right! First of all, it wasn't meant to be about me. A month ago, I spent about an hour on the phone with this young woman talking about the future of online social networking systems. I laid out my thoughts and research on the subject fairly extensively for her, albeit perhaps not in a way she was ready to easily comprehend. What came out of it was far worse than I anticipated. It is poorly written and quite short on substance. I wouldn't mind tearing it down point by point, but that might be a bit excessive. I've been known to get myself in trouble that way. Anyway, my friend Mercy tels me it may also be published in ReadyMade magazine, a cool DIY rag that I respect too much to believe that they would print this garbage... even in another form. Let's hope I'm right...

Here is why journalists and I are not compatible: I am telling a completely different story than they are able to get printed. The Gainesville Sun wanted a human interest piece... I wanted to help people anticipate the future so they can be far enough of the curve to help shape it a bit. I basically gave the same thoughts to my friend Peter when he was researching an article on Couchsurfing for a new magazine called GOOD. It is all about technology and ethical entrepreneurship, so it is a bit better suited for this kind of content. It also allows for more space, which is always helpful. I want an expose on the topic, but it looks like I'll probably have to write it myself... I've already started. Anyway, it is sort of silly to complain about this because I knew it was going to happen. I predicted it to Brian Cline halfway through my conversation with her. She had neither the skills nor foresight to do anything else, so I walked right into it.

I also realize social scientists complain about journalists' coverage of their research findings quite a bit, and I don't really want to fall into that rut either. We have to take responsibility for disseminating our own work in more appropriate forums than journalists can usually provide. They have some serious limitations: it has to be short, low brow, and sensational, hopefully with a tie to one individual as an interesting source. This is a terrible way to go about explaining what is going on the world to your audience, but it is the format they have really settled on at this point in time. I would recommend a book called “How the News Makes Us Dumb” by a UF professor of religion for a better analysis... I used it in my lectures on the media. Here's a link to my summary.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/agoldman/teaching/consumingmedia.htm

I have been developing an idea for an online magazine for the social science community as a way to keep this kind of thing from happening, but I have stalled in getting the marketing done for it. You can see the skeleton at http://www.soccurrents.com but I know it needs some more work. The next step is to take the opening letter I developed for it (sort of a call to action/description piece) and send it out to every academic listserve I can find. However, I have not taken the time to amass such a list nor am I confident in my ability to maintain the site and the basic organization while I am traveling. However, that is my dream. I need to make some moves on this idea soon, before someone else does. Better make some calls...