I suppose it depends on who you want your audience to be in regards to which profession you choose. An academic's work tends only to be read by other academics. Perhaps policymakers, if you're good. A journalist's work is read by a much broader audience.
More important though, I think, is the issue of freedom. Academics pursue whatever the hell they want to pursue (provided they can find the funding to do so). Journalists, at least at the grunt level, do what they're told. Journalists also lack a certain credibility. No one is going to consult a journalist on counterterrorism, no matter how much research the journalist has done on the subject. Her degree is in journalism, not international affairs or security studies or the like, and so she may be asked to explain press censorship or copyediting but will never, ever be seen as an expert on what she writes.
The process of both professions is the same. But the results aren't, and it's the results that matter.
1 comment:
It's how the results make you feel that matters.
Journalism is not for academics, I think... Nor is it for people with ideas. I realized this over this last, long year. You can be truly creative or you can be a journalist.
I learned this (please don't judge me) from reading Entertainment Weekly. Entertainment Weekly is not a highly respected publication because its reporters want to be comedians, actors, and movie/tv writers. They can't be - maybe they're scared to try harder or maybe they're too cynical or maybe just aren't good enough to make it big - and the fact that they're not doing what they want to do, what they're passionate about, is very evident in the publication's reputation.
Be you.
That is all.
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