A few weeks ago a highly speculative spot of news circulated...
Category: About Journalism
Introduce or comment on journalism topics
A few weeks ago a highly speculative spot of news circulated widely. It seems a researcher made public his notion that certain arrangements of fossilized vertebra from extinct marine reptiles in old ocean sediments imply that the seas once housed monster octopi or squid or something else resembling the mythical kraken. Evidence: the alignment of the vertebra looked sort of like sucker-lined tentacles, and hence could maybe have been the work of krakens making self portraits on their porches. That's right. Home-decorating cephalopods with an artist's grandiose eye.
We posted on the news here...
Seth Borenstein, a filing-demon and ...
Seth Borenstein, a filing-demon and Associated Press stalwart, tips us off the one of the other, highly prolific and devoted science reporters at AP is retiring tomorrow. He offered to write a short tribute. Offer accepted.
One of the unsung heroes of science writing is retiring Thursday after 43 years. The byline says Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer. It sounds daunting, but it’s not the person. He’s really just Randy to those of us who know him, from his colleagues to his competitors to his wide array of sources. Randy doesn’t call attention to himself, but his stories are strong, clean and usually first. He just wrote fast and well and went on to the next story. A...
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I just raced through yesterday's big NYTimes Special Section on Energy, both what hit the front stairs and the enhanced version on line. Did so after the wrecking ball that, at ClimateProgress...
Lotsa workshopping going on up here, lotsa...
Lotsa workshopping going on up here, lotsa notetaking as researchers go over their findings and hypotheses. Good hallway confabs, excellent scenery, fab members of the tribe.
In more data-driven words:
ScienceWriters2011, latest of the annual joint meetings of the National Association of Science Writers, with its Workshops, and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writers and its New Horizons in Science briefings, is winding up in fine style on this rolling landscape ~7000 feet up on the Colorado Plateau. That is, in Flagstaff, Arizona, pierced by historical Route 66 and site of the New Horizons sponsor, the quite impressive,...
The Web today is loaded with stories on one piece of news and containing such phrases as "for the first...
The Web today is loaded with stories on one piece of news and containing such phrases as "for the first time," "an important achievement," "a major step," "a groundbreaking achievement." Science journalists can imagine why; some editor asked why they should run this story now, and the hype machine had to be cranked up.
The news was that a research team found a new way to create something that resembles an embryonic stem cell without using in-vitro fertilization and confronting moral objections from some people. Unfortunately, the resulting cells cannot be used to treat anybody. The main reason is that they contain one entire extra set of 23 chromosomes. Just a single extra chromosome causes Down Syndrome. That's not an entirely apt comparison, but it makes the point...
Quick, somebody summon...
Quick, somebody summon Einstein from the great beyond. Maybe secular St. Albert would come up with a reason why neutrinos - particles that scoff at solid matter and fly through it almost like it's vacuum - appear after double-checking to traverse our planet's crust an oonch faster than what the books say is the speed of light, which means light in a vacuum and the fastest it is supposed to be able to go.
Maybe some weird time-dilating gravitational red-shift or blue-shift distorts what we think is the right stop-watch, so that these things seem to be zipping past with a c+ grade of hypervelocity. After all, there are geometric reasons why so-called "superluminal" jets in cosmic settings aren't...
When I created the Knight Science Journalism Tracker five years ago, I...
When I created the Knight Science Journalism Tracker five years ago, I imagined that science, medical and environment reporters would be tipping us off to stories they saw in their local media and even submitting their own stories. I now know that that doesn't happen nearly often enough, and I'm sure we miss a lot of good work. And bad stuff that should have its knuckles rapped.
That's why we put a button at the top of the page that says "Suggest Stories." Click on that, and you'll get a form to fill out with your name and e-address and a link to the story.
It hardly ever gets used.
So, please, if you see journalism that we ought to know about, that deserves to be seen beyond its local distribution, tell us. Push that "...
We haven't kept up here at ksjtracker on the continuing...
We haven't kept up here at ksjtracker on the continuing tide of layoffs and staff retrenchments in the hard-hit world of big city newspapers. But this week a double blow to the Los Angeles Times - not close to what it was in its glory, or even just ten years ago but still and despite bankruptcy a force in its megalopolis - commands attention.
First, Thomas H. Maugh II, after 26 years on staff and after many months of saying he was nearing the decision, announced his retirement. In an email to friends and colleagues he said simply "it is time to bite the bullet and become a man of leisure, effective August 31."
Highlights of his long career were captured at the LA Observed site...
At ...
At Scientific American's blogsite, under Assignment: Impossible, Charles Q. Choi, a science writer of considerable experience for one so early in his career, takes a deep dive into the foundations, wiring, and plumbing of the trade.
He asks a lot of questions - including what if any essential and reliably evident differences can be found between what an old-fashioned MSM reporter brings to an interview, and what a blogger does when rousing himself or herself to ring somebody up and talk about things before...
This...
This is kind of fun, although I've only skimmed through it at warp speed (which is speed so fast it warps objectivity and reason).
The BBC, incessantly under scrutiny by its audience, by many critics, and by the government that once held it in tight rein, recently commissioned an academic team to review its science coverage and to draw up some recommendations.
The leader of that project, Professor Steve Jones, an emeritus in genetics at University College London, found much to admire and not a lot of factual errors in the BBC's radio and TV handling of science, it appears. But his review also found plenty to criticise - seeing for example too little coordination...
Thanks to an email from Robin Marks of the...
Thanks to an email from Robin Marks of the Exploratorium in SF, distributed among board members of the Northern California Science Writers Ass'n,where I am more of a lurker than participant anymore, I just read a sterling little, critical analysis by one of this generation's more prolific and smooth science writers. Its subject is a piece by one of this and the last century's all-time greats at long form science and pretty much any other kind of writing.
- Nieman Storyboard - Carl Zimmer (July 7): "Why's this so good?" No. 2: McPhee takes on the Mississippi ;
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With or without a forecast high of 44 degrees today - that's Celsius, or 112° F - it's easy to know where all the cool people are in Doha, Qatar and we're not referring to industrial grade hotel air conditioners. That's at the World Conference of Science Journalists. Its host is a nation of considerable monarchy if not much democracy...
If you would like a chatty, brilliantly clear...
If you would like a chatty, brilliantly clear, and expertly detailed and illustrated explanation in plain English of the discovery and nature of Saturn's largest ring, a wispy donut of gas and dust far from the main ring system and signature of the orbit of a little moon named Phoebe, lo0k no further:
Planetary Society What We Do Blog - Emily Lakdawalla: The Phoebe Ring ;
That ran more than a year and a half ago, after Nature published a paper - and its authors amplified on it at a meeting - describing a ghostly halo shed by one moon of Saturn (and whose fallout paints one side of another, naturally pale moon nearly...
Ars Technica is a geeky...
Ars Technica is a geeky site, devoted mainly to (what else?) the technical arts, ie high tech and related consumer gizmos, that also has a few writers on call to do science news. I've usually skipped over it when linking to general media in a roundup of examples from outbreaks of herd journalism. It's not clear how much reporting it does, and how much of an audience it commands, and the funny name does not help.
But perhaps I should pay closer attention - and I did just now dive back into the report on forlorn, castoff planets a couple of posts down and add the Art Technica story on that. The partial change of heart comes after discovering at Ars Technica a story of some inside-the-craft...
Sometimes as a science reporter I get battle-...
Sometimes as a science reporter I get battle-envy regarding war correspondents, out there braving bullets and uniformed bullies and lots else too awful to think about, and then can come home to tell awesome stories, nonchalantly. Of course such envy occurs generally while safe and snug. The closest to organized threat I recall being while on the job was more than 20 years ago, talking with an angry rancher called Junior deep in Brazil's Amazon. He looked spookily like then-SF Giant first baseman Will Clark. Junior wanted SF Chronicle photographer Scott Sommerdorf and me to forget visiting his property, supposedly a place of illegal burning of the forest, or else. The else? He told our would-be hired boatsman in...
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