ABSTRACT
A common concern among journalists is that academics are remote or abstract in their concerns and speak in a language difficult to convert into news for a popular audience (Stack 2007). A common concern among academic researchers is that their valuable research and ideas rarely make it into the popular discussion managed by journalists and that, when they do, journalists tend to get their findings wrong or present them superficially (Kelly and Stack 2011). It is even more complicated when we look at academics' ideas that do not coincide with dominant or status quo thinking about issues of public concern (Kelly 2006). Our aim in this chapter is to think through whether it is possible to bridge what we see as a double divide in knowledge exchange and, if so, how. The first divide refers to the gap between academe and journalism in terms of how knowledge is represented and for whom (e.g. specialized, professional versus large and diverse publics). The second divide refers to the exclusion or marginalization of some areas of knowledge production and dissemination vis-à-vis mainstream media and university life (e.g. sexuality, disability, Indigenous and feminist studies).
