Category talk:Journalism academics

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[edit] Propose rename to Journalism scholars

Current proposal: Rename to Category:Journalism scholars and academics or Category:Scholars and academics of journalism; consider applying to Category:Scholars and Category:Academics trees more broadly. --Lquilter (talk) 16:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Background for discussion: I proposed renaming this category to Category:Journalism scholars, since many journalism scholars are professional journalists rather than academics. The 2007/11/16 CFD closed with no consensus.

The basic points that I see are:

• The academics versus scholars question is larger than just Category:Journalism academics; see Category talk:Academics.
• However even if two separate academic/scholar trees are maintained for most subjects some subjects are more problematic than others and I would argue that journalism is one of those, because "Journalism scholars" frequently practice as professional journalists for part or all of their careers. So maintaining a separate "scholars" category and a separate "academics" category will be unnecessarily confusing. Handled correctly, it will mean that journalists who had significant careers both as full-time academics (faculty at a university) will get Category:Journalism academics; journalists who primarily practice as journalists and not as academics but who nevertheless do journalism scholarship will get Category:Journalism scholars; and a good number of these will be both. In practice the distinction between scholars and academics has not been well-observed or policed here at wikipedia; the terms are often used synonymously. In journalism this is particularly problematic since there is significant fluidity between the academic & the professional track.

Other points or thoughts? --Lquilter (talk) 17:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

• I certainly agree with the first point, but ideally would prefer not to separate the categories. Can we just not call it Category:Journalism academics and scholars (or s's & a's of j, as I would prefer), or adopt scholars as the wider term? That is my preferred solution for the whole tree I think. Johnbod (talk) 18:06, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• I also agree with the first point, which is something I tried to clean up at CFD Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_November_28#Academics_categories, which has yet to close. Fundamentally, as described in our article academia, "An academic is a person who works as a researcher (and usually teacher) at a university or similar institution in post-secondary (or tertiary) education." From our article scholar, "A scholar is a person who learns and is often refered to as a pupil or student." I find that too broad for any normative classification for nearly every person learns or was a pupil or student. Any way, someone who fiddles about in his basement, in most government research labs, think tanks, industry, etc. is not an academic, regardless of what great works he publishes and discoveries he makes. He may be a scholar (in a more narrow American usage). A practitioner in the subject in which he is otherwise an academic blurs the line. Many law professors take on legal representation of clients (Derschowitz notably comes to mind), that does not take them out of an academic category in my thinking. Bringing this back to Journalism, which - unlike law - needs no license to practice: there are numerous academics that undertake journalistic tasks in order to further their research into different areas. For example, an economist may do surveys (as do journalists), or a historian may dig through newly released public documents to further research - some of which gets reported as news (notably Nixon's tapes or other famous people's papers that trickle out over time). What we should really be classifying here are people who are academics in the field of journalism itself - whether they practice the trade or not. That said, either of Johnbod's names, I too prefer his parenthetical, would accommodate this. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:06, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• "S&A of J" would work for me. (1) I'm agnostic about the "X of Y" versus "Yist X" formulation, so whatever draws more support is fine with me. So far, it looks like 2:0 "Scholars and academics of journalism" versus "Journalism scholars and academics". (2) Combining "scholars" and "academics" is great -- I completely agree that the distinction is close to useless for our purposes here on Wikipedia, since by far the vast majority of academics are notable because of their scholarship, not their teaching or their other academic duties (e.g., sitting on promotion & tenure committees). Scholars is broader and I would personally have loved to adopt it as the generic, but I think there will be a tendency of some people to pay heed to that distinction. Combining the categories addresses the need to explicitly include both scholars and academics. Those few academics who are also notable for their teaching can simply have a "Category:Teachers" (with the relevant subject subcategory) applied. I like this solution for Journalism, and am guardedly enthusiastic about it for the rest of the Category:Scholars and Category:Academics trees as well. (I'm off to propose it there; see Category talk:Academics for the broader conversation.) --Lquilter (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Johnbod's solution seems very practical--here and generally. the same situation, incidentally, occurs with lawyers. We have the current category: legal scholars. DGG (talk) 01:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, a longer reply I was writing got lost in the ether somewhere, but just a quick note to say that for journalists I'm happy with either of Johnbod's suggestions ("Scholars and academics of journalism" or "Journalism scholars and academics"); I can see good arguments for both, though I very marginally prefer "Journalism S&As" because of the easier sorting.

As to the broader distinction, I am very much persuaded by Lquilter's observation that the vast majority of academics are notable because of their scholarship, not their teaching or their other academic duties. I really struggle to think of any exceptions to that rule, but until we can figure put how to handle such exceptions I think we should hold off any mass merger of scholars and academics categories. In what sort of situations is a notable academic not also an notable scholar? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:23, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

BTW -- i'm definitely not doing any mass merging or even proposing it until there's a good lot of discussion & consensus. it would be a major PITA to undo something if we screw it up by too-hasty & thoughtless action. that's why i've been trying to start conversations & raise small particular categories such as this one to get a sense of what the issues are. (typically lawyerly approach.) --Lquilter (talk) 16:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

If the academic has won recognition for heading the university, for instance -- for instance, if Larry Summers had not had a highly notable publication record, he would have acquired notability for his comments as president of harvard. Alternatively someone might be highly notable as a teacher not as a scholar -- I can't come up with any examples but for instance Richard Feynman is highly notable as a teacher (as well as a scholar/scientist). Feynman brings up the other general issue of scientists -- in some sense they're a subset of scholars; in another sense they're parallel. The scholarly method article (redirected from scholars) says that "in the broadest sense, scholarship [includes] the scientific method" -- I think that's right; it's a "broadest sense" meaning of scholarship that includes science, but a narrower sense is also common in which "scholarship" refers more to research via texts ("the text") and science is the equivalent with research via the material world. In practice I think the way to handle it is to put "scientists" both under "academics and scholars" and parallel to "academics and scholars" (in occupations). --16:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lquilter (talk • contribs)

[edit] update

Carlossuarez46 had nominated 4 inconsistent scholars/academics by nationality categories for renaming (Swedish, Welsh, Scottish, something else); after I posted the proposal listed above that CFD was closed as "rename to fooian scholars and academics". I've posted on Category talk:Academics by nationality a proposal to rename that whole category tree. Even if we determine that it is appropriate to keep academics & scholars separate for some reason (I haven't heard anyone argue that since the combined S&A approach was offered), I think the combined S&A approach will work well for the "national S&A" categories, since terminology preference & usage can vary nationally. --Lquilter (talk) 18:29, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem is even wider, commenting this on Category talk:Academics by nationality .-JoergenB (talk) 14:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)