JOURNALIST'S RESOURCE

Based at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, the Journalist’s Resource project examines news topics through a research lens. They surface scholarly materials that may be relevant to media practitioners, bloggers, educators, students and general readers. Their philosophy is that peer-reviewed research studies can, at the very least, help anchor journalists as they navigate difficult terrain and competing claims. In 2013 the American Library Association named us... one of the best free reference Web sites. Their weekly email and Twitter feed serve to highlight the latest studies from academia that can inform public discourse. Given the deluge of research output every day, they aim to be a useful curator. Their searchable database contains top academic and governmental research that they have selected and synthesized. They strive to translate complex statistics into clear data points and reformulate the terminology of academic specialists into more accessible language, without sacrificing rigor or nuance. While they can’t provide access to the full text of every study, they try to provide at least a point of entry and highlight key points — and they encourage media members to contact the authors of the research directly. We invite all those interested in policy and public affairs to use the site’s materials, in particular instructors, students and journalists. No registration is required; the materials are free and are under a Creative Commons license. To understand the site’s basic goals, we recommend that you read their primer: “Introduction to Studies and Academic Research: How It Works and Why Journalists Should Care.” Their project has partnered with the New York Times, for example, to help create more research-related resources for readers; other active partners include the Nieman Journalism Lab and Scholars Strategy Network at Harvard. We also foster the improvement of Wikipedia pages relating to policy topics.More