The mission of Journalist’s Resource is to curate scholarship relevant to the media for use by practitioners, educators and students. We also invite all those interested in policy and public affairs — from citizen bloggers to civic groups — to use the site’s materials. Our open-access project is designed to provide state-of-knowledge information on topics of public interest. We’re now all living in the era of information overabundance; we hope you’ll see us a tool that usefully condenses quality information from authoritative sources and presents it succinctly.

Establishing and promoting the concept of “knowledge-based reporting” animates the project. Many of the nation’s top journalism educators and thinkers are increasingly focused on the idea of bringing journalism closer to the research world — both to meet the profession’s social mission and to ensure its high value in an increasingly crowded marketplace — and our site strives to provide a structure for accomplishing this.

The site is run by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, as part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. In addition to providing access to scholarly reports and papers on a wide range of topics, it makes available syllabi for educators and skills-based reference material.

Our philosophy is that, while we believe we’re archiving important scholarship, our database is always a work in progress — and we’re open to new suggestions. (Email John_Wihbey at hks.harvard.edu.) To meet the standards of the Journalist’s Resource website, research must generally be:

• The product of authoritative institutions such as major U.S. universities, research organizations or governmental bodies.
• Based on rigorous research, without bias or ideological motivation.
• Published in a peer-reviewed journal.
• Written in clear language accessible to lay readers.
• Timely and relevant.
• Freely available.

All content is free, open to the public, and considered to be public domain, operating under a Creative Commons license (see below).

The chief components of the site are:

• Policy studies provide links to reliable, timely research in the categories of environment, economics, society and government. Each study is accompanied by a brief overview summarizing its findings, teaching notes and links to other relevant material. Studies are selected by a research team based at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. To be included, research should be empirically based, peer-reviewed, published and the product of a major university, government body or nonpartisan research organization. See more on criteria for inclusion.
• Reference articles offer information on core journalism skills, including interviewing, style, ethics and more, as well as links to online tutorials.
• Instructor’s material is intended to help educators use Journalist’s Resource. It includes information on how the teaching material is organized, its use and typical journalistic problems. We also have sample syllabi that you can adapt to your specific needs as well as a case study on teaching knowledge-based reporting.

In terms of attributions, we encourage you to cite the publishing institution or journal named. All other material should be credited to Journalist’s Resource. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please contact us.