It was not always like this. Somewhere around 2010ish, schools started to encourage faculty to engage with media, especially to get their research covered in the popular press. Suddenly, it became commonplace to see print-outs of news coverage of faculty research posted on bulletin boards near elevators and other public places on campus. Naturally, this "signal" was heard loud and clear and faculty (especially junior faculty) increasingly chased after newsworthy topics, creating a bit of a rat race. Today, faculty self-promote on social media, posting about publications, promotions etc. I tie this all back to the moment where the schools themselves decided that news coverage was important.
Sadly, I have never heard news coverage mentioned during a tenure meeting. On the contrary, candidates may be criticized at promotion time for work that's too cute and insufficiently rigorous. In short, I think junior researchers may be misguided if they think the pursuit of trendy topics is the path to tenure. On the contrary, a solid research agenda with rigorous work and novel intellectual ideas is still the recipe for success at tenure time. The challenge then - how to communicate this reality back to the scholars wasting time with media attention instead of intellectual pursuit?
I think our corner of quant marketing is more resistant to these forces than other parts of the business school, and especially at Booth. But I can tell you that these signals are brought up in hiring meetings for non-rookies. When I walk through my business school, I see banners that highlight rankings (not even particularly good ones), citations, and media mentions.
I should say that not all media engagement is bad. Deep engagement with an area in an educational or policy role is laudable. For example, my colleague Jetson Leder-Luis was on the Complex Systems podcast and did a great job explaining his research on Medicare fraud and its implications.
Is the problem that juniors are getting the wrong signal, or that University and faculty committees insufficiently prioritize publicly relevant work? I love how tenure can insulate people from needing to be immediately relevant, and do deep obscure work, but I can also see the opposite force. The goal should be enduring policy/scientific/etc relevance, which might be positively (if noisily) correlated with media attention.
It was not always like this. Somewhere around 2010ish, schools started to encourage faculty to engage with media, especially to get their research covered in the popular press. Suddenly, it became commonplace to see print-outs of news coverage of faculty research posted on bulletin boards near elevators and other public places on campus. Naturally, this "signal" was heard loud and clear and faculty (especially junior faculty) increasingly chased after newsworthy topics, creating a bit of a rat race. Today, faculty self-promote on social media, posting about publications, promotions etc. I tie this all back to the moment where the schools themselves decided that news coverage was important.
Sadly, I have never heard news coverage mentioned during a tenure meeting. On the contrary, candidates may be criticized at promotion time for work that's too cute and insufficiently rigorous. In short, I think junior researchers may be misguided if they think the pursuit of trendy topics is the path to tenure. On the contrary, a solid research agenda with rigorous work and novel intellectual ideas is still the recipe for success at tenure time. The challenge then - how to communicate this reality back to the scholars wasting time with media attention instead of intellectual pursuit?
I think our corner of quant marketing is more resistant to these forces than other parts of the business school, and especially at Booth. But I can tell you that these signals are brought up in hiring meetings for non-rookies. When I walk through my business school, I see banners that highlight rankings (not even particularly good ones), citations, and media mentions.
I should say that not all media engagement is bad. Deep engagement with an area in an educational or policy role is laudable. For example, my colleague Jetson Leder-Luis was on the Complex Systems podcast and did a great job explaining his research on Medicare fraud and its implications.
Thanks for the comment. Food for thought.
Is the problem that juniors are getting the wrong signal, or that University and faculty committees insufficiently prioritize publicly relevant work? I love how tenure can insulate people from needing to be immediately relevant, and do deep obscure work, but I can also see the opposite force. The goal should be enduring policy/scientific/etc relevance, which might be positively (if noisily) correlated with media attention.
I also think of this post from SA wondering why George Mason seems to go a different route with its hires: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-bc8