Best Briefs?

[WildcatPF'er]

So, besides Crossfire briefs, what are the best briefs on the market for PF'ers?

I'm curious because we are considering at looking buying a few.

[hxc forensics]

I know the answer to that question...

[pfdebater1]

Why don't you just do your own research? If you are concerned with doing well (hence buying multiple briefs) you might as well do your own research. None of the top teams buy research, usually just the lazy ones.

[PFDebate]

None of the top teams buy research, usually just the lazy ones.

To quote Mr. Turkentine:

"Of course you don't know. You don't know because only I know. If you knew and I didn't know, then you'd be teaching me instead of me teaching you -- and for a student to teach his teacher is presumptuous and rude. Do I make myself clear?"

[WildcatPF'er]

Why don't you just do your own research? If you are concerned with doing well (hence buying multiple briefs) you might as well do your own research. None of the top teams buy research, usually just the lazy ones.

Actually, many of the top teams do purchase briefs. It's how these teams use the briefs that makes the difference.

The reason why I ask is because many of the teams in our circuit use briefs. In fact many of them rely upon them heavily. Part of my strategy is to obtain the briefs and read the evidence provided by whomever I by them from and get a general idea of what the team is running.

I do my own research. I have competent coaches who help me gain success. The only reason that I wish to purchase these briefs is to be used as supplemental material.

So before you assume (and you should know what assuming does...), think of truly how briefs can be employed positively.

And also, I have already received my answer to this question.

[FoxOnSocks]

While I don't mean to disparage any brief writers out there, they really aren't worth the money and lost experience for most teams. (Full disclosure, I purchased briefs when I did policy and on a handful of topics when I did PF.) The benefit to briefs is time saved. My partner and I were the debate team's coaches, so we had a lot on our plates, in addition to coursework, jobs, and other extracurricular activities. So we did purchase PF briefs during the months when we didn't have enough time to research or teammates who could be expected to chip in.

But nothing we bought was ever so obscure that we couldn't or wouldn't have found it (or equivalent evidence) on our own and often the purchased briefs still made up less than a third of our typical evidence pile. I see teams today going into rounds with nothing but the Crossfire briefs. Again, nothing against the CF briefs (I never had the opportunity to use them in-round, so I can't speak to their quality), but you can't do that and expect to win big.

Briefs are a crutch. If you have absolutely nothing (can't walk), they can help keep you from falling flat on your face. But you also can win a footrace if you're using a crutch. The teams that can research well enough to find the items in the brief file should save their money and do the research themselves (additionally, they'll learn more in the process than the briefs could ever teach).

Teams who can't do the research necessary to find the items in the briefs should, at the very least make every effort to try to find it on their own (including asking for help) because it's the only way to learn. If you rely on the briefs for a major chunk of your evidence, you will lose the benefit of gaining research experience and also lose out on the extra information that not in the file that you will uncover in the search process. The process of finding evidence often provides significant topical information that is not part of the evidence you find (occasionally, this extra information will be even more useful).

If you "must" purchase evidence, it should be in addition to significant research of your own and only if you have exhausted your abilities to find the evidence you buy.

[PFDebate]

I view handbooks (including my own) as a supplement, not a substitute, for personal reading and research. I don't think handbooks are intrinsically good or evil.

I'm certain that some teams only prepare for a topic by using Crossfire Briefs. I'm certain that other teams use them for bibliographic reasons and to see what arguments they might hear. I release the table of contents each month. I have no idea if it increases or deceases sales, but it does provide some transparency.

I don't think buying handbooks is substantially different from attending policy debate camp and coming home with hundreds of pages of evidence or getting the free camp files from the NDCA site.

[FoxOnSocks]

I don't think buying handbooks is substantially different from attending policy debate camp and coming home with hundreds of pages of evidence or getting the free camp files from the NDCA site.

I will agree that there is little difference in kind (and certainly no "evil" or moral wrongness), but I think there is a substantial difference in degree. While Policy resolutions (and, therefore, camp files and other evidence resources) are active all year, PF resolutions change monthly. So the shelf life of any given piece of evidence is much more limited.

Second, partly because of the format and partly because of the judging pool, PF rarely requires obscure evidence. For most PF topics, teams can find 90+% of the evidence they need on mainstream news sites (nytimes, cnn, washingtonpost, etc.). The evidence is easy to find and the arguments are relatively straightforward. Conversely, Policy debate requires obscure evidence in order to answer your opponents' obscure evidence. Again, because of format and judging pool, policy debaters run wacky off-the-wall positions (my least favorite was a Taiwan DA on the U.S. Mental Health topic, but that's hardly the worst example) so you need answers to the Japan CP and the latest Politics DA, and Spanos, and De-Dev, and Eco-fem, and myriad other arguments (some of which are run every year with only minor changes) that cannot be found in a reasonable amount of time by one team without paying for access to resources or purchasing/trading evidence.

PF was designed, in part, to be a debate event that is very much unlike Policy (or LD, which is becoming increasingly policy-like) and in many respects, the NFL has succeeded thus far. So I think the Policy comparison is distinguishable. That said, as I noted above, there are times when purchased files are useful and worth the expense. Whether and how to utilized purchased evidence are questions each team should evaluate for themselves, but I caution that, based on what I've seen of PF at present, too many teams over-rely on purchased evidence, to their detriment.

(As an aside, while I also have no idea what effect it has on your customer base, I like that the CF Briefs's tables of contents are posted. Obviously I am not in the market anymore, but that's the kind of thing that would make me more likely to purchase if I were. E.g. maybe I don't like the TOC one month, so I don't buy, but that's a lot better for you than if I buy blind and then don't like the file I get, because then I'm mad that you hoodwinked me and stole my money and you'd lose a customer for good.)

[PFDebate]

I'm just trying to nail down the nature of your objection. Do you object to Public Forum handbooks because of the cost or because some teams only read the evidence without doing original research?

At $140 per year for 10 issues that averages out to $14 to month and I license them on a per school basis which allows a school to legally give the file to every student at the school if the want. (Not all handbooks are sold and licensed this way). If I gave away the handbook would you find its use less objectionable? What if I only sold a bibliography and topic analysis?

Would there be greater or less harm if I sold the handbook as a limited edition, e.g. 50 copies for $100 each month to limit the number of teams that could use them?

I think the problems of using handbooks has nothing to with money. The comparison to CX handbooks and camp files (or even squad research) is not perfect, but I do think all debaters, regardless of event) benefit from reading as much topic literature as possible.

[Mishak]

Coming from a small school that has an even smaller debate budget, our team is very grateful for the work put into some of the briefs out there. The school cannot afford for us to purchase membership to legitimate databases like Lexis Nexis. Google (and other similar search engines), while faithful sometimes, is a rather tempermental mistress. Purchasing briefs out of our own pockets is an inexpensive alternative. Crossfire Briefs and other publications allow us to have the same advantage as other, larger teams do. As a team that has competed on the local and national circut, briefs have helped us in both places. While we do not rely heavily on them, they are still nice to have, especially in out rounds. So we are definitley thankful for what these publishers do.