Instead, academia should be thinking larger. We do not need professors to write for newspapers — the medium itself is not necessary. Academia can do two things to support a vibrant, reliable information ecosystem: support open access and support faculty blogging. Open access publishing increases the availability and reach of scholarship; the original articles are more accessible, allowing more general purpose writing to piggy-back off them. And as for academic blogging, the future of news need not contain newspapers as we know them. Plenty of brilliant professors have compelling and informative blogs, but for the most part, these are not considered positively in the tenure process, creating a disincentive to young scholars. If Zimmerman and others who care about high quality information want to promote it, they should encourage tenure committees to support academic blogging.

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The right way — the fair way — is to continue the NIH open access policy that requires researchers receiving taxpayer money from the NIH to submit a copy of their manuscript to the free, publicly accessible PubMed Central database. By removing the barrier to scholarship, open access allows scholars to advance the frontiers of knowledge and lets ordinary Americans increase their awareness of various medical conditions.

Check out the whole thing here and take action to support open access here.