The response to my earlier post about the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study How News Happens makes me think I should clarify a few things. But first, if you haven't already, please read Steve Buttry's critique.

I said earlier that it was a waste of time to criticize the study's scope when the thinking behind it was so sloppy. I still believe it's unnecessary, but it's not a waste of time; the omission Buttry found reveals how high journalism prejudices undermined the study's validity.

Mark Kawar said my criticism of the study's first question ("Where does the news come from in today’s changing media?") was semantic. Technically, since I am talking about meaning, it is, but I don't accept that as pejorative.

Kawar asked if I would have preferred, "In what medium do widespread, fact-based storylines begin?"

Yes.

The rephrased question is superior to the PEJ's because it dares to offer a definition of news. But it sounds a little silly, right? It makes me think "news" isn't what I want to look at. It also makes me look askance at the word "medium," when "media" kind of slipped by. It also reveals the question as a bit of a tautology. We can predict the conclusion: newspapers. Everybody knows that!

Here's where I say something about stuff everybody knows: They don't really know it. And I don't object to research that does nothing but support or contradict what is assumed to be well-known. Now, I did write that "every beat reporter in the known universe" already knew what the study had concluded, and I did quote a very short extract of Jeff Jarvis' reaction to the PEJ. Let's just say it's because I felt the boulder come rolling back down the hill. I mean, great, now we have a club to wave in the face of the next raving amateur blogger who claims he's outdoing us. I could use one of those. Or a study to plug into a literature review. That's useful, sure.

But I also fear it's fuel for another few months of smug smiling while we wait for print circulation numbers to pick up. If we build it, they will come! Just wait until the economy turns around!

Kawar also wrote that it sounded like Buttry and I wished the PEJ had tried to answer a different question. (Note: These were Tweets, so Kawar probably has more to say or might have said it differently. It's just all I have to go on right now.)

If I had my druthers, yes. But there are two questions in the PEJ's study, with one of them rephrased several times. So, which one?

I'm interested in what a post-newspaper information market would look like, but the PEJ didn't get us there. I'm a little leery of the question, "Who really reports the news that most people get about their communities?"* It sounds moralistic, and I'm more interested in how people get information, share it, use it, etc. I think people who run newspapers should be, as well.

But I would have been happy with any question, so long as it was clear and well-defined, rigorously modeled, and properly related to the conclusion. How News Happens is none of those.

*Why are all these questions so prolix? There's nothing wrong with "Who reports the news?" The rest doesn't add gravitas; it's just weight. Pace Steve Buttry, but if the PEJ had an editor, how did "The answers are a moving target; even trying to figure out how to answer them is a challenge." survive? Figuring out how to answer questions is the challenge.