About Josh
Hi! I guess you’d call me the proprietor of Understudy, but not in the sense that I control the content. I pretty much just installed the site and let it run. If you want to know a bit about me, here are the basics…
I’ve worked in (science) journalism, starting out at a student paper, then working as a production intern, first for a Discovery Channel contractor, and then for ABC News Nightline. I’ve been a freelance producer for Radio Lab on WNYC New York Public Radio, a junior editor for Seed Magazine, and a blogger for Scientific American.
The rest of the time, I’ve been in academia. I’ve got a masters degree in medical ethics from the University of Pennsylvania, and am working my way through an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Cornell University’s Communication Department. I have a lot of interests, but my research focuses on journalism, new media, and the increasingly permeable boundary between them.
My take on these subjects? Journalists aren’t as unique as they’ve been made out to be by sociologists. Now that amateurs are replicating many journalistic endeavors in less formal environments, like blogs and wikis, we’re beginning to see that, while some “news criteria” that journalists use in selecting and reporting the news are unique to journalism, its work routines, and its structural environment, others may simply be features of human communication more generally. I’m interested in developing theory to explain how and when the things we think of as “news criteria” are used by other people in less formal situations, online and off. If you’re not sure what I mean by this, or it sounds weird, ask me more about it!
—Josh Braun