Category: blogging

Embargoes: stranglehold or service?

PIOnet is mildly abuzz today with chatter pertaining to Monday’s Inside Higher Ed piece about the embargo system employed by science journals (“The Embargo Should Go,” by Vincent Kiernan).

Kiernan’s premise is that science writers have a love-hate relationship with the embargo practice. While reporters like Natalie Angier of The New York Times believe that “the embargo system gives journal editors ‘a stranglehold on journalistic initiative’,” Kiernan notes that “[j]ournalists are enthusiastic participants in the embargo system and act to keep it functioning. In short, if journalists are in a stranglehold, it is a self-inflicted stranglehold — and one that does not serve the public interest.”

It need not be this way. Journalists could do end runs around the embargo, if they wanted. “Any decent journalist knows what’s in Nature next week,” says David Whitehouse, science editor for the BBC’s Web site. That point is exemplified by Robin McKie, science reporter for The London Observer. He writes for a paper that publishes only on Sundays; because of the embargo’s timing, journal articles seem like old news by the time his paper publishes. Consequently, McKie refuses embargoed access to journals but nevertheless has broken news of important embargoed studies such as the cloning of Dolly and the results of decoding of the human genetic sequence. Much of his reporting, he says, is based on talks given by researchers at open meetings.

On the PIOnet listserv, one PR guy noted that embargoes have become “part of marketing efforts for particular journals. They usually serve no journalistic function. Whenever someone comes to me and wants me to embargo a news release, they have to come up with a pretty powerful story even to get my attention.”

Wrote another PIO:

… [S]cience/medical writers already have a variety of options other than doing pack journalism: they can go to science conferences, peruse abstracts, press releases, tip sheets…….the very things that seem to be getting disparaged here [in Kiernan’s article].

Instead of covering the same thing many other writers are covering, an enterprising reporter can find a wealth of fascinating, context-rich stories in the material sent out by PIOs. PIOs always have compelling stories on tap for enterprising reporters — stories that go begging. …

Those press releases and tip sheets aren’t the problem. The problem, I think, can be that enterprising science/medical don’t realize that those releases and tip sheets are signposts that can lead them into a world of original, and perhaps, exclusive, reporting opportunities. And with the substantial output of material from universities daily, enterprising reporters hardly have to worry about stepping on each other’s toes chasing the same one or two stories.

How better to get your nose under the tent that to make a point of following up on more of those press releases and tip sheets? They’re not the only way to get your nose under the tent, but they are surely a quick, effective way to discover stories — and new sources — that can be a font of future enterprise pieces and new contacts.

Let’s hear it for the PIOs!

Yes, let’s. Huzzah!

A lot of great work is happening on college campuses that doesn’t make it into the scientific journals. Much of it isn’t necessarily of the breakthrough quality the big-league science journalists are looking for. Some of it is applied research that is leading to innovations in the marketplace. Some of it is student-centered research that doesn’t find its way into Nature or Science, but into smaller journals.
Maybe the real stranglehold here isn’t the embargo system, but science journalists’ reliance on the journals for their news.

Then again, maybe the problem is like that encountered by another PIOnet member, who wrote this about his experience at a conference organized by science writers from the New York Times:

I spent almost the entire time defending PIOs and news releases. They were very negative towards us and put down news releases. I brought up a few stories they had developed from news releases — a few were mine, most were from others.

I not only didn’t get my bang for the buck, but any good reputation they might have had with me took a nose dive.

Unless things have changed — I don’t know because I have never gone back — if the NYT science writers are any indication, there may not be many “enterprising” science writers out there looking at news releases.

A prospective student’s guide to college marketing

Two years ago, Sam Jackson, a senior at Phillips Exeter Academy, started blogging about his search for a college. His blog, the Sam Jackson College Experience, offers his perspective on an array of issues that should be of interest to higher ed marketers.

Sam on web vs. print marketing:

“How much thought went into making this?” That’s the first thing I ask myself when I get something. This is why thin envelopes filled with nothing but bland “please consider” form letters are used as coasters and never make it to my “keep for later” pile. It’s also why I delete on sight most of those summer school e-mails. If you got my name from the Student Search service and make that fact painfully obvious, don’t expect me to consider your 25 cent investment in my contact information hugely indicative of your interest in me. Likewise, just because you e-mail me five times after I don’t respond to your first form e-mail asking me to “please request” something, doesn’t mean I’m going to care any more about it the sixth time.

Sam on the value of student blogging:

More would read them if they knew about them (when I point a friend to a blog from a student / adcoms at a school they’re interested in, they tend to become frequent visitors) but at the same time, my friends and I are more inclined to trust the statements of bloggers who maintain a strict independence from the institution they are blogging about. …
For the admissions-flavored blogs, we look at them — or at least, I look at them–and regard them as a different type of marketing. Something else to be looked at and considered when thinking about schools and admissions, but something which has to be looked at in the same sense that the viewbook or postcards that inundate our mailboxes are received.

Sam on his visit to Yale:

I would say that he [the admissions rep] fairly and accurately presented Yale as an institution, focusing more (as administrative officials are wont to do) on the administrative side of things, though what he said about student life was well-received. Jackson said that Yale looked first and foremost to student transcripts when considering applicants — grades and rigor. Not surprising, but worth knowing, even if was a little disheartening given my 2nd quintile lifetime performance to date.

There’s more — much more — worthwhile reading here, so take a look, and tell your admissions officers to have a look, too. Sam Jackson may not be representative of next year’s freshman class at your institution (certainly not ours), but still, his thoughts are worth pondering, and his blog is a service to all of us in the higher ed marketing business.

Hat tip to Karine Joly, who interviews Sam on her blog.