I’m sure if you’re established enough you can simply e-mail or recommend it to the relevant people or point them to the place in which they are hosted. Since there is no cost the total readership could even be higher and especially amongst students who are hardly noted as having much disposable income.

We’re talking a readership here in the low thousands; if your paper carries all the bibliographical citations, formatting and everything else to make it a de facto academic paper (save the publisher’s rubber stamp) then it shouldn’t be a problem to get it out there to your niche readership if you really think it best at the expense of formality.

I had this debate few years back with a postgrad at Liverpool uni; I said to him ‘if you want to advance views like many authors have, put them in a plain speaking form with only the odd lapse to technicality.’ – He defended the acadaspeak because it lends an air of knowledge and is good for those minds who can navigate the prose. It’d be done for ages so it was fine: Seemed a bit too close to blinding with science to me.

I never got a degree and view academia mostly from the outside; maybe there are compelling reasons for all the jargon and new words that are so cumbersome and stunted as to mostly not catch on. Were I wanting to put together theories on online journalism I wouldn’t keep my conceptions fenced behind the walls surrounding the gleaming spires of Britain’s intellectual establishment.

Big questions I ask to myself constantly are ‘who’s going to read it?’ ‘Why?’ ‘How much can they read before moving on?’ ‘What topic should I do for the biggest exposure?’ That’s Journalism 101; ironically your expert can’t see the wood for the trees when it comes to embodying what he feels qualified to teach on.

In local press you have to simplify the writing as the audience can be of lower educational standard. For magazines you have to employ a tone that matches well; eg. videogaming press want a snappy tone with adolescent ‘Top Gear’ish jokes. Millions of jobsworths in marketing/PR tell this in much fluffier, Latinized buzzword language. Past generations did it anyway because it was sensible and didn’t need articulating.

Me being ‘above’ (or ‘below’) anything is irrelevant. Journalists who do enough work on a theme know this: You want to put across an impression regardless of if you actually ‘feel’ anything yourself; as a freelancer I rarely can pick and choose what to write on. Online I’m a pseudonymous satirist, offline I might put on airs of cultured middle-class knowledge or a down-at-heel everyman fixated on working class or ‘lefty’ issues.

Journalists aren’t scrutinized near as much as politicians; so our characters can afford to be less rigid – those skilled enough provided they don’t start doing TV work or otherwise become famous can be the everyman, the expert specialist, the refined cosmopolitan; anything that doesn’t stray too far from the boundaries of reason/customer appeal.

Amorality is a big part of the trade; we were mostly moral and barely hypocritical all of British journalism would be unrecognisable – because we’re human though it is what it is. My point is that you can still put on pretences and be this kind of ‘quality’ hack; a character cut out of the cereal box of your own imagination. ‘Views’ are a means to an end and can be for fun or profit…

Sometimes it can go too well though.

But hey if you’ve an opening for a nice paper on the ins and outs of old school modus operandi just give me a bell Paul. Never done work for a uni, but there is a first time for everything…we could put it up for free online! I’ll go get my pipe and mothballed tweed jacket.

-Pete @ dirtygarnet.com

To me journalism doesn’t need abstract buzzspeak packed analysis; most quality journos would learn far more and have far more fun reading Mencken and Orwell’s accessible, conversational essays on all manner of things. Less is more; simplicity is the key; it’s closer to being a labouring artist than a mathematician or doctor or other intellectually tangible profession. Anyone would think the ivory tower types who write this radge are just angling for influence and future job advancement! Or are simply divorced from the reality of the average journo’s mentality/reading habits.

Given the bewildering amount of diversification in academia that leads naturally to spurious tripe this is probably credible in comparison to what papers would be like in the other subjects. Imagine a big long analytical write up for Travel and Tourism or Parapsychology. All in acadaspeak that might as well be a Caesar cypher to those surrounding the trade.

‘Nodes’? ‘Paranodal?’ ‘Nodocentrism’? Ever seen Nathan Barley on C4? Chris Morris made that terminology humorous in his satire of ‘new media’ types who have high walls of jargon and ego between themselves and reality. How right he was to do that.

Not to mention requiring a subscription; I mean what planet are these conceitedly aloof sods on anyway?

-Pete @ dirtygarnet.com