Monique Laney, Assistant Professor, Auburn University
Proposal Type: Roundtable
Abstract: Roundtable to open up a conversation between historians and journalists about their experiences/frustrations in collaborating with each other in interview situations.
Seeking: This roundtable would be intended to open up a conversation between historians and journalists about their experiences in collaborating with each other in interview situations. What are some of the challenges and what can be done to overcome them? For example: Journalists often find that academics tend to generalize and speak in abstracts about a subject, instead of telling more personal and colorful stories, while historians are often concerned that journalists will quote them out of context or oversimplify a complicated issue. Assuming that the issues vary within the categories of “historian” and “journalist,” we would like to open up this forum to public historians, academic historians, print or long format journalists, broadcast or other electronic journalists and publicists to discuss some of the issues they have encountered in the past when dealing with each other, describe how they resolved those issues, and open up the conversation to the audience more insights and ideas.
We are open to suggestions for modifying the focus of the conversation and are looking for representatives of any of the above categories to join the roundtable.
Related Topics: Civic Engagement, Teaching, Media
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Monique Laney, laney.monique[at]gmail.com
If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Perhaps you could contact the Local Arrangements Committee members for the 2015 NCPH conference. They may have contacts of journalists working in/around Nashville. It might be easier than to make journalists come to Nashville for a conference they may not be familiar with.
I note that Rebecca Onion from Slate has proposed a topic, too. Perhaps she would be interested in joining this conversation?
This also seems related to the proposal on this list about developing “History Communicators.” Perhaps join forces?