Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Ian Johnson: A Report From the Borderland Between History and Journalism
[Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine, and author of "China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know," published this year by Oxford University Press. Ian Johnson is a writer who lives in Beijing and Berlin and the author of "A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West," published this year by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.]
A few years ago, one of us was covering China for The Wall Street Journal, writing articles that would win a Pulitzer. The other was teaching at Indiana University's history department and serving as acting editor of The American Historical Review, one of the discipline's flagship journals.
But if you had just browsed our most recent books, you wouldn't know which one was written by the journalist and which by the professor. And if forced to guess, you would probably bet that the reporter wrote the present-minded, lightly footnoted China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, and the academic historian produced the archivally based A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West....
Since making the leap, we've each found it hard to go back. We've discovered we get a kick out of spending time in this borderland.
One of us relishes going there for the chance it gives him to indulge his inner archive rat and to add some ballast to his reporting by burrowing into old documents. The other finds it rewarding to steer clear of the archives for a time and participate in public arguments about China.
Perhaps most important, we see ignoring stylistic barriers and mixing different forms of research as good strategies for combining the virtues of two fields. We can inject our books with the rigor of the academic, while having a shot at speaking to readers who have grown skeptical of academic works....
Read entire article at CHE
A few years ago, one of us was covering China for The Wall Street Journal, writing articles that would win a Pulitzer. The other was teaching at Indiana University's history department and serving as acting editor of The American Historical Review, one of the discipline's flagship journals.
But if you had just browsed our most recent books, you wouldn't know which one was written by the journalist and which by the professor. And if forced to guess, you would probably bet that the reporter wrote the present-minded, lightly footnoted China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, and the academic historian produced the archivally based A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West....
Since making the leap, we've each found it hard to go back. We've discovered we get a kick out of spending time in this borderland.
One of us relishes going there for the chance it gives him to indulge his inner archive rat and to add some ballast to his reporting by burrowing into old documents. The other finds it rewarding to steer clear of the archives for a time and participate in public arguments about China.
Perhaps most important, we see ignoring stylistic barriers and mixing different forms of research as good strategies for combining the virtues of two fields. We can inject our books with the rigor of the academic, while having a shot at speaking to readers who have grown skeptical of academic works....