[Updates with observation that Time Warner owns CNN and that a Time reporter spoke about the cancer cover story on CNN.]
Time magazine's April 1 cover story entitled "How to Cure Cancer,...
Category: About Journalism
Introduce or comment on journalism topics
[Updates with observation that Time Warner owns CNN and that a Time reporter spoke about the cancer cover story on CNN.]
Time magazine's April 1 cover story entitled "How to Cure Cancer," which I critiqued in an earlier post, praises the work of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Here are some of the things that reporters Bill Saporito and Alice Park had to say about it:
Dr. Ronald DePinho, president of MD Anderson Cancer Center, is adopting a similarly collaborative approach around what the world-renowned institute calls its Moon Shots program, assembling six multidisciplinary groups to mount comprehensive attacks on eight cancers: lung, prostate, melanoma, breast, ovarian and three types...
When I was looking for my first journalism job, I did my best to scrape together a clip here and there. Every time I got a new one, I sent it with my resume to all the suburban papers around Boston, where I lived at the time. For the first couple of years, nobody replied.
Then I got a call from a fellow who...
When I was looking for my first journalism job, I did my best to scrape together a clip here and there. Every time I got a new one, I sent it with my resume to all the suburban papers around Boston, where I lived at the time. For the first couple of years, nobody replied.
Then I got a call from a fellow who identified himself as the city editor at the Lowell Sun. He invited me in for an interview. Why? "We had five copies of your resume in the file, and we decided we had to either hire you or get rid of you. We don't have any more room."
I did get hired, but not on the staff. I was given a halftime position with no benefits, at a rate of $100 per week. I was told that if I worked 40-50 hours a week in my "halftime" position, and if I did a spectacular job, they might--might--hire me as a regular staffer. It took me about a year to get hired.
It has always been tough to break in to journalism. And it's tough...
[Updates with addition of some authors' names, links, and mention of article in Outside magazine.]
National Geographic led the list of National...
[Updates with addition of some authors' names, links, and mention of article in Outside magazine.]
National Geographic led the list of National Magazine Award finalists with seven nominations, the American Society of Magazine Editors announced today. Wired received three nominations and Scientific American was awarded two.
That put science journalism in a leading position among the 62 finalists in 23 categories. (The language is a bit confusing. "Finalists" are the nominees among which a winner will be chosen in each category at a dinner in New York on May 2.)
National Geographic received its honors in the categories of general excellence in print and digital media, and...
On Saturday, The New York Times published an obituary for Yvonne Brill, 88, a scientist famed as a pioneering woman in the United States' rocket system programs and as the inventor, in the 1970s, of a critical propulsion system to keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.
...On Saturday, The New York Times published an obituary for Yvonne Brill, 88, a scientist famed as a pioneering woman in the United States' rocket system programs and as the inventor, in the 1970s, of a critical propulsion system to keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.
The lead, however, didn't mention any of that. It read: "She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise children. 'The world's best mom,' her son Matthew said.' And in case you - like so many of us - found that wrong-headed in the extreme, that's also a lead that's disappeared. If you call up that obit today, you won't find that opening paragraph. The stroganoff bit has been replaced by a different description, that of 'brilliant...
Jane Goodall reportedly plagiarized much of her new book, “Seeds of Hope” and, worse still, included quotes from an interview that the interviewee said he doesn't remember.
The coverage of the scandal was mostly deferential. The Washington Post broke the news in...
Jane Goodall reportedly plagiarized much of her new book, “Seeds of Hope” and, worse still, included quotes from an interview that the interviewee said he doesn't remember.
The coverage of the scandal was mostly deferential. The Washington Post broke the news in a story by Steven Levingston, who wrote that problems with the book came to the paper’s attention through a botanist commissioned to review it. A few other stories followed, and then at the Daily Beast, Michael Moynihan took an unsparing look at the book and at his fellow journalists for failing to state clearly what was wrong with it. (I believe this must be the same Michael Moynihan who pointed out Jonah Lehrer’s fabricated Bob Dylan quote.)
In the Post story, Levingston noted some passages...
[Disclosure: I am on the board of the Science Friday Initiative, which produces Science Friday, and I am a guest on the program from time to time.]
NPR announced this morning on its blog that...
[Disclosure: I am on the board of the Science Friday Initiative, which produces Science Friday, and I am a guest on the program from time to time.]
NPR announced this morning on its blog that it is canceling its 21-year-old afternoon news program Talk of the Nation, effective July 1. But host Ira Flatow and Science Friday, which fills a Talk of the Nation time slot, will continue to broadcast at the usual time--from 2-4pm Eastern time on Fridays, according to a statement.
"We see this is a terrific opportunity for us," said Danielle M. Dana, executive director of the Science Friday Initiative, in an email to the organization's board members. "We’ve spent 22 years making excellent, award-...
Last week, I wrote post about a collaboration between the PBS NewsHour and Center for Public Integrity, a look at the story of California environmentalist Erin Brockovich and twenty years of efforts to clean up industrial contamination in a small desert town....
Last week, I wrote post about a collaboration between the PBS NewsHour and Center for Public Integrity, a look at the story of California environmentalist Erin Brockovich and twenty years of efforts to clean up industrial contamination in a small desert town. As I noted, the strength of the story was in a detailed look at the way that the chemical industry tries to infiltrate the regulatory system.
But as science writer George Johnson also wrote in a piece on Slate, the story seemed too accepting of the Brockovich perspective that the industrial contamination in question - hexavalent chromium - was extremely dangerous in the trace amounts found in the area. Johnson's piece, as...
NBC science correspondent Robert Bazell is leaving the network after 38 years, TVNewser reports.
In an email to the staff, he wrote,...
NBC science correspondent Robert Bazell is leaving the network after 38 years, TVNewser reports.
In an email to the staff, he wrote, "The best thing about television journalism is that you never do it alone. Everything is a cooperative effort. To all of you who have shared your wisdom, your talent, your hard work, all the good times and adventures and above all your friendship, I cannot begin to express enough gratitude."
Bazell will be joining Yale University as an adjunct professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.
I have run into Bazell often, at scientific meetings and elsewhere, and I know him to be a smart and hard-working reporter. Television isn't always kind to science stories that require intelligent and sometimes lengthy...
A new report on the state of American journalism found "a continued erosion of news reporting resources," and " a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into...
A new report on the state of American journalism found "a continued erosion of news reporting resources," and " a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands."
Those were among the many disturbing conclusions from the latest annual report on American journalism by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The report was released earlier this week.
I wasn't inclined to make too much of the report, because it seemed a bit irrelevant to the news industry that I write about. In my opinion, there has never been as much science writing, or as much good science writing, as there is now. And I think that's true of the media generally, not just science journalism. I haven't been this excited about the news business since I was trying to claw my way...
Any newspaper can do something that really ticks off anybody who has a set of hackles to raise. A Brooklyn-based blogger, press critic, and climate change news specialist has a tidy tantrum out today aimed at two newspapers at near-opposite ends of the spectrum of old-time UK media. His ire has merit and...
Any newspaper can do something that really ticks off anybody who has a set of hackles to raise. A Brooklyn-based blogger, press critic, and climate change news specialist has a tidy tantrum out today aimed at two newspapers at near-opposite ends of the spectrum of old-time UK media. His ire has merit and deserves a wide audience:
- Discover / Collide-a-scape blog - Keith Kloor: When newspapers con the public ;
There's not much to add from this end, as it'd just be to say huzzah and go get'em Keith. His targets are an example of "crazy-ass reporting on climate change" at the Daily Mail...
If you were as impressed and enlightened as I was by Steven Brill's article on American healthcare in Time magazine, you should take a look at...
If you were as impressed and enlightened as I was by Steven Brill's article on American healthcare in Time magazine, you should take a look at the conversation he had on March 7th with reporters and editors at ProPublica about the origins of the story, how he put it together, and how it came to be published in Time. It's a short course in the practice of journalism at the highest level.
The conversation--which you can listen to or read a transcript of--begins with ProPublica spokesman Mike Webb complaining, mildly, that Brill got a story that ProPublica would dearly like to have had. "We were a little jealous," he said. "After all, longform journalism is our bread and butter at...
This week, the journal BioScience made available an upcoming paper with the rather unassuming title "Journalism and Social Media as Means of Observing the Contexts of Science". On first glance, you might...
This week, the journal BioScience made available an upcoming paper with the rather unassuming title "Journalism and Social Media as Means of Observing the Contexts of Science". On first glance, you might think this an unlikely study to generate an angry response.
You have to read a little farther to get to the explosive potential. The paper, published by communications researchers in Germany and the United States, results from a survey of neuroscientists in both countries who were asked to weight the relative value and influence of traditional news outlets versus blogs. Or as the researchers put it in the abstract, to assess "the influence of various types of 'old' and 'new" media on public opinion and political decision making.
Based on the response of some 250 scientists (fairly evenly divided between the countries), the researchers found...
Among writers who call themselves essayists, creative nonfiction is thought of as a lower form of life. It is defined only by what it is not: not fiction. Tacking "creative" on nonfiction is an attempt to "cloak it with dignity," says the master essayist Phillip Lopate...
Among writers who call themselves essayists, creative nonfiction is thought of as a lower form of life. It is defined only by what it is not: not fiction. Tacking "creative" on nonfiction is an attempt to "cloak it with dignity," says the master essayist Phillip Lopate in his new book, To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction. (Lopate admits that his preference for the term "literary nonfiction" is "a bit of gratuitous self-praise.") When literary awards are passed out each year, he writes, they include "a healthy list of fiction writers and poets" and "one or two nonfiction writers, if that."
What, then, of journalism? Journalism happens to be nonfiction, at least when practiced legitimately, but it...
I'm not sure how many technology writers and commentators would attempt to write a letter to John Stuart Mill concerning the subject of free speech, but Jason Pontin, the editor of MIT Technology Review,...
I'm not sure how many technology writers and commentators would attempt to write a letter to John Stuart Mill concerning the subject of free speech, but Jason Pontin, the editor of MIT Technology Review, chose that as a way to explore the sometimes "vexing" issues concerning free speech in the Internet age. (The Tracker is published at MIT but has no connection with Technology Review.)
Addressing Mill as "pale ghost," he begins by noting that "much has changed since you died in 1873," but "your lucid little book On Liberty (1859) has survived." In that book, Mill lays out the "harm principle," which says that individuals are sovereign except when they must be constrained to prevent harm to others. Free speech, an expression of individual sovereignty, must be...
If you will pardon a bit of in-house news from Knight Science Journalism at MIT, we are happy to announce the establishment of a new fellowship that will support a journalist for an academic year in the creation of a publishable, digital science...
If you will pardon a bit of in-house news from Knight Science Journalism at MIT, we are happy to announce the establishment of a new fellowship that will support a journalist for an academic year in the creation of a publishable, digital science journalism project.
Unlike the other Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT, which allow journalists to spend the school year studying (and thinking!) at MIT, the new fellowship will put its winner to work. It's an ideal opportunity to pursue a story or multimedia project that requires significant up-front financial support.
The product of the fellowship should be a video, audio, or digital piece, or a written work if it can be published in some digital form. Fellows are encouraged to collaborate with news organizations to develop and publish their projects.
The fellowship begins this August and the final project will be...
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