From Eric Newton, VP of Journalism, Knight Foundation:

Stop the presses … The Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly has published a piece of writing with a’relatively good’Flesch readability score‘…

“Changes in Professionalism…”‘(Summer 2009 edition), by David H. Weaver et. al., starts this way:

“In 2002, Knight Ridder was one of the biggest newspaper companies in the United States. Time Inc., the nation’s largest magazine publisher, had more than 140 publications reaching about 300 million readers. John S. Carroll was editing a resurgent Los Angeles Times, which eventually won thirteen Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership. The McClatchy Company’s flagship newspaper was the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, a publication for which it had paid $1.2 billion in 1998. And the nightly news programs of the major broadcast networks were poised for growth in ad revenues after several years of decline.

“By the end of 2007, none of those things was true.”

Wow. Nice to see scholars writing that way.

The article goes on discuss how the changing’news ecosystem seems to be’hurting’professionalism.’Researchers report’erosion of the’progress they saw’in “The American Journalist in the 21st Century.”‘ Fewer journalists’in’professional groups (47 percent in 2002,’39 percent in 2007) … fewer at dailies say they can “almost always” get subjects covered (59.6 percent in ‘02,47.1 percent in ’07)… ‘If we’re lucky,’we will see a’press release on it all’on J&MC Quarterly’s’ Reasearch You Can Use page.

What’s more, the study was done’before the news ecosystem’really started changing in 2008 and 2009.’ More timely’surveys are available by the Associated Press Managing Editors and American Journalism Review and at American Society of News Editors.

… and that’s the rub.’ The later surveys are more useful.

What good is it for scholars to put into’our hands today a survey of American journalism professionals from’2002 to 2007 when much bigger changes happened’in 2008 and 2009?’

In this age of instant publication, why can’t’journalism scholarship’move faster?

Ernie Wilson,’dean of the Annenberg School‘at the University of Southern California,”asks Where are J-School in Great Debate over Journalism’s Future? ‘ Great question.’ He raises good points on the value of’digital innovation on the professional’side of journalism education with experiments such as News 21.’ But the’scholastic side shouldn’t be’exempt from digital revolution, either.

Now that computers can tell us whether or not their research is readable, why not make it readable?’Since computers can publish it immediately, why not release it when it can really be of use?