After an experiment in which we opened comments to allow anyone to comment on Tracker posts, we have decided to require registration once again.
We found ourselves deluged with spam, despite the use of CAPTCHA schemes, and we didn't see a corresponding increase in legit comments. In fact, we were in...
After an experiment in which we opened comments to allow anyone to comment on Tracker posts, we have decided to require registration once again.
We found ourselves deluged with spam, despite the use of CAPTCHA schemes, and we didn't see a corresponding increase in legit comments. In fact, we were in danger of missing legit comments in our sweeps to clear out the spam.
Sorry about the inconvenience; we are working on a new way to do this, and we will open comments again as soon as we can.
In the meantime, if you are not registered, please register! And sign up for our daily alert regarding new posts!
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Cheers.
-Paul Raeburn
The Knight Foundation on Wednesday said in an unbylined blog post that it "should not have put itself into a position tantamount to rewarding people who have violated the basic tenets...
The Knight Foundation on Wednesday said in an unbylined blog post that it "should not have put itself into a position tantamount to rewarding people who have violated the basic tenets of journalism. We regret our mistake" in inviting the disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer to speak at a Knight conference, the post said.
The admission followed a day of blistering and widespread criticism of Knight and Lehrer on Twitter and elsewhere online.
On Tuesday, Knight paid Lehrer $20,000 to deliver a speech that, in the view of many critics, amounted to a rehearsed apology aimed at rehabilitating his journalism career. It was the first time Lehrer had spoken publicly about the scandal that broke last summer, when he was tripped up by reporters and admitted plagiarizing others, reusing his own material in new...
Standing beside a large screen displaying brutal comments on Twitter, the disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer today delivered a talk that seemed to be aimed primarily at rehabilitating his writing career, rather than offering any insights on his journalistic misdeeds.
...
Standing beside a large screen displaying brutal comments on Twitter, the disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer today delivered a talk that seemed to be aimed primarily at rehabilitating his writing career, rather than offering any insights on his journalistic misdeeds.
Lehrer was paid $20,000 for his talk by the Knight Foundation, according to Andrew Sherry, the foundation's spokesman. Lehrer spoke at a Knight Foundation journalism conference in Miami. (The Knight Fellowships at MIT were established by a grant from the Knight Foundation.)
In his first public remarks since resigning from The New Yorker last summer, Lehrer began by apologizing to his readers and his colleagues. "My mistakes have caused deep pain to those I care about...I am profoundly sorry," he said. "It is my hope that someday my...
In general, science writers must learn to navigate the complicated terrain of two different professions - their own writerly world and the world of scientific research. Understanding the former helps the writer stay solvent. Understanding the latter helps the writer stay smart - figure out what research is...
In general, science writers must learn to navigate the complicated terrain of two different professions - their own writerly world and the world of scientific research. Understanding the former helps the writer stay solvent. Understanding the latter helps the writer stay smart - figure out what research is worth reporting, which scientists are credible, and how to put a given study into the context it deserves.
Among my favorite tools in this regard, is Retraction Watch, the blog created by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, which details and investigates scientific retractions and the reasons for the withdrawal of certain papers. If you follow the blog, you end up with a surprising wealth of insight into the high demand way that science works, the standards set by research journals, the evolving rules meant to insure integrity. And you also get sense of repeat offenders in this process - for instance, as in ...
New Scientist, the respected British science news magazine, is running a contest offering the winning writer a tour of the Arctic sponsored and led by a Norwegian oil company.
"New Scientist has teamed up with the global energy company Statoil to provide one lucky winner...
New Scientist, the respected British science news magazine, is running a contest offering the winning writer a tour of the Arctic sponsored and led by a Norwegian oil company.
"New Scientist has teamed up with the global energy company Statoil to provide one lucky winner and a guest the trip of a lifetime. They will cruise around Spitsbergen, one of the closest islands to the North Pole, fly to the giant Troll platform and descend 300 metres below the waves to the sea floor," says the contest announcement.
The description of the prize sounds like something from a TV game show. "You and your friend will fly to Svalbard and spend one night in the capital Longyearbyen and two nights aboard a luxury cruise ship. A Statoil guide will be your host as you sail across the pristine waters of the Billefjorden, go...
The Neiman Journalism Lab ...
The Neiman Journalism Lab ran a piece yesterday by Sam Petulla on the increasing use of "sentiment analysis" in journalism. If the term is unfamiliar, the practice probably isn't. It's the use of such things a Facebook comments and analytical software to separate positive comments from negative ones, and to see how they correlate with, say, the results of an election.
Petulla doesn't do much in the way of explaining how such analysis is conducted, but he does show that its use is increasing, and that it offers both promise and peril. "What’s interesting about the use of sentiment analysis by...
Earlier this month, my Tracker colleague Paul Raeburn posted a detailed and substantive critique of Columbia Journalism Review's big cover story in this year's first issue, which he described as a...
Earlier this month, my Tracker colleague Paul Raeburn posted a detailed and substantive critique of Columbia Journalism Review's big cover story in this year's first issue, which he described as a deeply flawed take-down of diet and health reporting by The Atlantic's David Freedman. I'm not planning to pile onto those story criticisms though.
I'm here to criticize the cover illustration that went with it.
I've posted an image of that cover, which features the jokey teaser headline for Freeman's piece "Why is Diet Research So Thin?" But really the headline is only secondary to the main focus of this cover which appears to be a swimsuit model. In fact, a thin yet nicely endowed model wearing a two piece suit with a, um, slightly...
Some years ago, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker, of Science Online fame, decided to create a place where the best science blogging could be featured. That project, called the Open Laboratory, became so successful that it eventually grew into an admired annual anthology. ...
Some years ago, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker, of Science Online fame, decided to create a place where the best science blogging could be featured. That project, called the Open Laboratory, became so successful that it eventually grew into an admired annual anthology. The Best Science Writing Online 2012 was published last year by Scientific America/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
But as Zivkovic thought about it, he realized that many excellent online science stories are also told not by written words but in sound, image, video and other multimedia formats. And it was this idea that led to a collaboration with other like-minded creative science communicators and the announcement yesterday of a new project, Science Studio. As one of the Science Studio founders, Rose Eveleth...
Sports Illustrated put him on the cover. ESPN couldn't get enough of him. Other sports news organizations felt the same way. And in all their coverage of star Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o, they missed the single small detail that his girlfriend, who was said to...
Sports Illustrated put him on the cover. ESPN couldn't get enough of him. Other sports news organizations felt the same way. And in all their coverage of star Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o, they missed the single small detail that his girlfriend, who was said to have died tragically in September just before a big game, did not exist.
The sports blog Deadspin skillfully dissects the story under a headline that reads, "Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax."
"In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the...
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In early January, Hamilton Nolan at Gawker published a piece titled "Journalism is Not Narcissism", in which he deplored the current fad for first-person in journalistic story telling. His argument is that this is often a lazy way to tell a...
In early January, Hamilton Nolan at Gawker published a piece titled "Journalism is Not Narcissism", in which he deplored the current fad for first-person in journalistic story telling. His argument is that this is often a lazy way to tell a story and one that often ends up being writer rather than subject focused: "At their very best, they offer some amount of insight learned through experience. Mostly, they offer run of the mill voyeurism tinged with the desperation of attention addiction."
This led Gary Schwitzer at Health News Review last week to ponder the same trajectory in health and medical reporting. "Why am I writing about this on a site that focuses on health care journalism?" he asked. "Because we see many stories by health care journalists reporting about themselves. They are often imbalanced, incomplete, non-evidence-based stories....
[Updates with info from comments, below, saying The Atlantic did not properly distinguish between ad copy and editorial, and with a link to a post by David Dobbs.]
As the media consultant Jeff Jarvis tweeted on Tuesday, it was a "disturbing day for journalism: CNET...
[Updates with info from comments, below, saying The Atlantic did not properly distinguish between ad copy and editorial, and with a link to a post by David Dobbs.]
As the media consultant Jeff Jarvis tweeted on Tuesday, it was a "disturbing day for journalism: CNET sells out for CBS; Observer kills a column for the offended; Atlantic runs Scientology advertorial."
In three separate instances, websites had been ordered not to publish or had withdrawn material that had already been posted. But the circumstances were different in each case, and the differences bear scrutiny.
The CNET/CBS clash
I posted yesterday on this case--CBS's decision to quash a review by its subsidiary, CNET, of a digital-video recorder that allows viewers to...
Last week, about 40 members of the CNET.com editorial staff met at the CES trade show in Las Vegas to select the website's official Best of CES product. They chose the Dish Network's Hopper with Sling "because of innovative...
Last week, about 40 members of the CNET.com editorial staff met at the CES trade show in Las Vegas to select the website's official Best of CES product. They chose the Dish Network's Hopper with Sling "because of innovative features that push shows recorded on DVR to iPads," according to a post by CNET Reviews editor-in-chief Lindsey Turrentine.
When CNET's parent company, CBS, learned of the choice, it ordered CNET to withdraw the Dish Hopper from consideration, according to Turrentine. She reprinted the CBS statement, which read, in part, "The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp."
Was this a case of censorship by CBS to protect its...
I meant to get this out for New Years, but it took longer than I thought. At least it’s been posted before the end of New Year's week.
Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt
I’ve been raving about this book since I read it last summer. Why Does the...
I meant to get this out for New Years, but it took longer than I thought. At least it’s been posted before the end of New Year's week.
Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt
I’ve been raving about this book since I read it last summer. Why Does the World Exist isn’t the kind of book that chronicles a scientist’s quest for something, and that’s fine since there are already plenty of those. This is a book that uses science to help answer a very human question.
Jim Holt, whose byline you might recognize from the New Yorker, seeks out philosophers and scientists to help us understand why the world exists. The scientists include physicists David Deutch and Steven Weinberg, and Holt’s conversations with these two are sophisticated and detailed without lapsing into jargon or concepts that aren’t widely understood. The science chapters show that it’s indeed possible...
Announcing: Open commenting on the Knight Science JournalismTracker! No registration needed.
Our tech expert Patrick Wellever has been working on a project to open comments here to anyone, whether registered or not. He just emailed me to say he has thrown the switch. You now can comment on a post...
Announcing: Open commenting on the Knight Science JournalismTracker! No registration needed.
Our tech expert Patrick Wellever has been working on a project to open comments here to anyone, whether registered or not. He just emailed me to say he has thrown the switch. You now can comment on a post immediately even if you are not registered at the Tracker.
We still encourage you to register; we're eager to expand our circle of friends. But if you haven't registered and you feel the urge to join the conversation, please do so.
-Paul Raeburn
For the last few months, the investigative reporting team at ProPublica has been exploring issues of patient safety in the United States. Some outstanding health reporters working with the non-profit - including Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, Charles...
For the last few months, the investigative reporting team at ProPublica has been exploring issues of patient safety in the United States. Some outstanding health reporters working with the non-profit - including Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, Charles Ornstein, Marshall Allen and Blair Hickman, have contributed to the stories, which ranged from an insightful look at why patients don't report medical errors to some blisteringly good stories looking at how the health care system failed patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
But, as important as they are, those stories only hint at the major investigation now underway, with many more stories anticipated. And highlighting the work done doesn't do justice to the innovative quality of the journalism in this evolging project. I was reminded of that...
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