When not good enough is an artifact of different genres

I

I don’t know about you, but I’ve turned into a survivalist when reading articles on major policy issues. If it doesn’t hook me in the first couple of paragraphs, I scroll down to the last paragraph and read backwards on the look-out for the upshot. If I find something, I read backwards for a bit longer and decide if it’s worth returning back to where I first left off.

This is largely a problem of genre. The journalist article starts with the dead or dying victim, when I the reader want to know upfront, not what’s wrong, but what’s actually working out there by way of strategies to reduce the victimhood. Something must be working out there; we’re a planet of 8 billion people!

I want to know right off how people with like problems are jumping a like bar of politics, dollars and jerks better than we are. Then tell me how we might modify their doing so in order to make it work here as well.

II
There is also that other genre, the academic article on a major policy issue. To be honest, some articles are doing better to get to the upshot(s), at least within the first two or three pages of single-spaced text, i.e., if and when they get to the part, “This article contributes to. . .” Still, too many top-of-the-page Abstracts conclude with, “Finally, implications are drawn for further action.” As if the oasis is somewhere out there in the desert of words ahead.

Tell me what those implications are so I have energy to read the next 20 pages. I’m not asking the authors to simplify. I’m asking them to tell me what they conclude or propose so I, the reader, can decide whether or not their actual analysis supports their case. Indeed, tell me upfront, because I may find I have something better to recommend from their assembly of facts and figures.

III

There is also that Executive Summary you find in some–by no means all–policy-advocacy reports. Many such reports are also doing a better job laying out recommendations upfront so that the readers can decide for themselves whether the rest of the text makes their case.

The problem arises where the rah-rah of advocacy gets in way of the details of how to implement the recommendations. You still find many instances of the already obvious, “We need a more equitable society,” and then full-stop. Not.Good.Enough. These aren’t calls for action but a form of bearing witness, a very different policy genre than the advocacy report.

IV

In fact, many long-form journalism pieces or academic articles come to us posing as two other genres, essays or mysteries. We the readers are meant to see how their thinking unfolds. Or in the case of executive summaries, the values of the advocates are to shine bright above all else. Fair enough for readers knowing they are reading essays or mysteries or a tract. But not good enough for others who want more by way of action.