What Researchers can learn from Journalists?
Well, not to beat around the bush: researchers can learn lots from journalists - uncover new facts, angles, always gather different perspectives from multiple sources, find a storyline, think of the reader perspective, avoid sloppiness. Phew.
There's more though.
Simon Kuper's piece "Lessons in Listening" (http://on.ft.com/1K6xW8s) in The Financial Times, 6/ 7 Feb. 2016 sparked off three new thoughts on how journalists can be a source of inspiration to us analysts, researchers, insight gatherers:
Insightful-moments often come, in Mr. Kuper's experience, after the official interview is over. Once pen and pad have been set aside, thanks expressed - it's then the interviewee comes up with the things he/ she had been wanting to say.
Thoughts arise as we talk.
Quoting from, referring to famous, likely more knowledgeable people has a wonderful halo-effect, appears vaguely scientific, but getting it wrong in any way opens you to coming across as pretentious.
The first point is something that many of us in qualitative research will relate to - we need to be able to go with the flow more, meander, in order to get to what is really important to our partners in research. Clientside researchers out there - this one's for you guys.
The second one - that our thoughts form whilst we are talking - is something highlighted by the Romantic poet Henrich von Kleist in a letter he wrote in 1802 (http://bit.ly/1SWFtYV). He illustrates his central point vividly with a (possibly embellished) episode from the Early Days of the French Revolution where Mirabeau challenged the Monarch's orders - an act of insurrection. In Kleist's account the rebellious speech-act is spurred by the articulation of his "smouldering" thoughts, forcing them to come to a conclusion.
Take out for researchers: nudge, probe gently, allow haf-formed thoughts to articulate themselves, let people take their time. The opposite, perhaps of agility: more sensibility - more "sense".
Finally, Mr. Kuper's use of Kleist's letter and its content is extremely misleading, if not simply wrong. He suggests that Kleist wrote about the art of listening as a source of inspiration. The essay isn't about listening, it's about the relationship between talking and thinking - as I checked by going to the original source.
The lesson for Researchers - despite all the exhortations to help bring our findings to life, we need to make sure we are sure-footed with detail, 100% accurate, at every stage of a project, and especially when it comes to presenting results. Story-telling is an important skill, but embellishments should never depart from what we can support empirically.
So that's it's it - thoughts prompted by the FT, that wonderful pink icon of a newspaper.
Curious, as ever, as to others' thoughts