A couple of our most thoughtful science bloggers have been involved in recent days in a discussion about where science journalism is headed. The discussion has already produced a fascinating example of what we might do to get away from the familiar but problematic practice of shaping our coverage around the convenience of scientific journals–a practice that might well do more for the journals and their financial bottom lines than it does for our readers.
The conversation began in the wake of ScienceOnline 2011 (about which, see earlier Tracker posts by me and by Charlie). John Rennie, the former editor of Scientific American, railed against paper-of-the-week science coverage, which limits the news reaching the public to stories “mostly from a select subset of premium journals,” and “to only a small number of stories from those journals.” (He published a transcript of those remarks on his PLOS blog, The Gleaming Retort.)
“Why are we in such a hurry to collect the opinions of other scientists (or whoever else we think is relevant) and cram them into the stories, with very little opportunity for forethought? It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Rennie writes.
Let’s now define science news as what was published this week, he argues. Instead, he asks, provocatively, what if we waited?
Ed Yong, of Not Exactly Rocket Science on Discover blogs, was inspired by Rennie’s call for new ideas about science coverage, and he came up with something unique–and, I thought, inspiring.
Yong, who has been covering research on induced pluripotent stem cells (mature cells that are re-wound into a stem-cell like state) took the most important stories of the past few years and put them into an interactive timeline with links to the sources.
John Rennie was as impressed as I am with Yong’s work. In a follow-up post, he wrote, “Even if we all agree that the press release-driven pack journalism that now passes for science news is unfortunate, who is really doing anything about it? Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science, that’s who.” Rennie entitled the post “Why Ed Yong is the Future of Science News (and You Could Be, Too).”
As Rennie says, this doesn’t mean we should all drop everything and write nothing but timelines from now on. But it’s a fine example of what a little thought and imagination–in lieu of reflexive filing–can produce. Colleagues at Reuters, the AP, and other rapid-response news outlets are quietly chuckling at my naivete, I’m sure. But I haven’t forgotten my 15 years at the AP. It isn’t easy to break the mold, but thanks to embargoes, we often have time to play around a little before filing. (I know, embargoes have all sorts of problems, but, in this case, we can use them to our advantage.)
Yong constructed his timeline using a site called dipity.com, which provides the timeline software. I wondered how long it took Yong to put this thing together, and so I asked him. Here’s what he said:
It took around 7 hours in total, of which 5.5 went into collating the content. Once that was done, it was fairly straightforward to upload everything into Dipity. The interace is very easy to use. I reckon that now I’ve done it, I could streamline that process into under 6 hours. I’ve covered a few of these stories myself and I’ve been following the field so I knew the key events and papers that I wanted to hit. I also searched the news archives of places like Nature, Scientific American, New Scientist, Wired and so on, to see which events they covered. As per usual, I went back to the primary papers (the abstract, at the very least) to make sure I was representing things fairly.
And here are some of his thoughts on the project:
I think the timeline works because like any good feature, it tells a story. You read it and you can get a sense of the intense competition (lots of people publishing at the same time in different journals), the key players (the same names keep cropping up) and a field that’s slowly advancing. It works because the chronological element to it adds something extra – if it didn’t you might as well stick up a list of bullet points.
As you can see, this isn’t easy to do. It’s easier if, like Yong, you use it for a continuing story that you’ve been covering. But even then, it’s a significant time commitment, especially for unpaid bloggers. Yong told me that he’s had some nibbles from employers who might want to hire him to do this for them. It might turn out that this venture–aside from inspiring us and provoking worthwhile discussion on new ways to cover science–will turn out to be profitable for its author.
“Regardless of immediate remuneration, I now have a resource that I (and others) can use for future stories,” Yong said. “One thing I noticed when I scoured the archives of other news sources was that their stories on this topic were incredibly repetitive. They always had to touch on the same key points to give a bit of background and they had almost identi-kit quotes from researchers about the value of the latest discovery and the goals for the future. I can understand the need for that, but I can now embed my little gizmo and let readers see the full context for themselves. And getting some recognition from peers doesn’t hurt either ;-).”
It’s a nice piece of work. Take a look, and see whether it doesn’t inspire you, too.
– Paul Raeburn
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