3 Goals for 2009: Media Relationships

Following a media career, I’ve spent the last decade trying to better understand how our minds think about media. What can I do with that knowledge that would help you?

This blog serves as the outreach from my lab to the professional world. My 2009 goals for my career and this blog focus on making better connections this year.

Chris Brogan’s post on three goals inspired me to pin down the goals: relevance, outreach, and relationships.

Relevance

We in academia must do a better job getting our work into the hands of media workers. We must make it relevant.

Brogan said, “Simply, the work I do in 2009 is not about theory.”

Well, the work that I do is about theory. And that’s a good thing.

A good social scientific theory illuminates patterns that never could be seen simply chasing one practical problem at a time. A good theory helps intelligently guide behavior in meaningful ways.

But that’s not immediately intuitive, and it relies upon good theories. There’s a lot of good work being done in communication science. You’ll see me strive here to make it relevant to my students, our alumni, and most importantly, the broader media and social media industries.

Outreach

Relevance goes both ways. I will try to show you how our work is relevant to you. But I also need to know what you’re doing.

That is, I need your help. So I’ll be asking for your help in 2009. In addition to reading your blogs, newsletters, and Tweets, I’ll be contacting you for help. I’ll ask what you’re doing that my students need to know today.

For those of you who are especially generous with your time, I’ll ask you to speak to my classes. Since Texas Tech is in remote rural West Texas, we’ll make good use of Skype.

So many of you already have been generous with your time and offered to share, and for that I am extremely appreciative.

Guest Posts

Part of my outreach will involve writing on other blogs. My goal is simply to get more information about what we’re doing in the lab into your hands.

I love my day job as a professor, and I’m not trying to trade that in. But the word must get out.

I believe passionately in what we do, and I know you’re not hearing about it. Wherever the opportunity arises, I will try to engage you in a conversation about the intersection of research and practice.

Relationships

When we connect and engage, we need to take advantage of that inertia. I believe that we can have a reciprocal pattern of value added relationships.

Your practice and insights will benefit our teaching and research. And our research — and our students who are better prepared thanks to your advice — will benefit your practice.

There is no ivory tower. But there are a lot of talented researchers doing good work but frustrated that their results never impact industry.

Together we can improve industry, individuals, and academics. I hope you’ll start today with a comment below. What can my colleagues and I do to make your media careers and lives better?

Happy New Year!

Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com

Tagged as: goals, industry, Research