Tom Shales was a widely admired columnist for The Washington Post where, he says, he "spent roughly 39 varyingly rewarding years, most of those as TV critic."
"Varyingly" is the key word. Shales, in a post on the About Editing...
Category: journalism
Tom Shales was a widely admired columnist for The Washington Post where, he says, he "spent roughly 39 varyingly rewarding years, most of those as TV critic."
"Varyingly" is the key word. Shales, in a post on the About Editing and Writing blog by Jack Limpert, former editor of The Washingtonian, explains that much of the "variation" in his rewards came from editors he had, a few of whom were great, and most of whom were awful. There is no room for mediocrity in Shales's universe.
If you're an editor, you might be inclined to stop reading when you get to this, in the third graf:
I regularly denounced editors as a species, insulting them with such disparagements as, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t even teach, edit.” Editors, I liked to say...
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...
A writer working with John Belushi's widow on a biography of Belushi says he can demonstrate that reporting by the legendary Bob Woodward of The Washington Post might get the facts right, but it distorts their meaning.
"How accurate is his reporting? Does he deserve...
A writer working with John Belushi's widow on a biography of Belushi says he can demonstrate that reporting by the legendary Bob Woodward of The Washington Post might get the facts right, but it distorts their meaning.
"How accurate is his reporting? Does he deserve his legendary status? I believe I can offer some interesting answers to those questions," Tanner Colby writes in Slate. Colby says his work on the new Belushi biography put him in the position of essentially re-reporting Woodward's 1984 book ...
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...
In March, Charlie Petit wrote in these pages about the debut of a new outlet for freelance writers, especially those who like to go on, and on, and on. Just kidding; I like long-form stories as much as the next guy, if they...
In March, Charlie Petit wrote in these pages about the debut of a new outlet for freelance writers, especially those who like to go on, and on, and on. Just kidding; I like long-form stories as much as the next guy, if they're good--and a lot of them are.
And now we have a chance to find out. The site, called Matter, has just posted its first story, a 7,800-word offering by the science writer Anil Ananthaswamy. You can pick it up for 99 cents, or you can subscribe for a year for 99 cents a month and get everything Matter publishes. (Which isn't all that much--one story a month is the plan.) I thought I'd start slowly and just pony up the buck for this one.
So I did. The story popped up in my browser. The site also asked me for my Kindle email address. My what? I paled at the thought...
News International Corp. is closing Eureka, the monthly science magazine of The Times, three years after its launch.
The staff was told of the magazine's demise on Sept. 28,...
News International Corp. is closing Eureka, the monthly science magazine of The Times, three years after its launch.
The staff was told of the magazine's demise on Sept. 28, according to Media Week. It said it learned from a source that the closure "was a sign of shifting consumer and corporate priorities, as the heightened time of political consciousness around the environment and green issues appears to have receded in these austere times." News International said it hoped the 20 members of the editorial staff would be given other roles in the company.
The last issue is entitled "Apocalypse: The disaster issue."
-Paul Raeburn
[Thanks to Jim Handman...
13Sep 2012
The issue of whether or not sources should be allowed to approve quotes before publication has arisen once again, this time in the White House.
Michael Lewis, the respected author of the best-selling "Moneyball" and other books, wrote a story on President Obama for Vanity...
The issue of whether or not sources should be allowed to approve quotes before publication has arisen once again, this time in the White House.
Michael Lewis, the respected author of the best-selling "Moneyball" and other books, wrote a story on President Obama for Vanity Fair, and he conceded this week that he had agreed to allow the White House to review and approve or nix quotes before they went into the story.
In a story by Jeremy W. Peters in The New York Times, Lewis, who wasn't quoted directly, seemed to justify the practice by saying that the White House objected to very little of what he wrote. That's nice to know, I suppose, but it sidesteps the issue of whether Lewis should have agreed to the review or not. Peters seems to suggest...
The planets will perhaps pause in their orbits, the Sun flicker, and the presses stop...
The planets will perhaps pause in their orbits, the Sun flicker, and the presses stop rolling for a moment as I report this morning's mournful news.
An investigative report by Ed Yong, whose tears must have dripped on to his manuscript as he crafted his sad tale, reveals that the practices of our superhero journalists have disgraced our noble profession.
Clark Kent has relied on his inside knowledge as a journalist to go on an entirely unauthorized crusade...
On the occasion of its 100th anniversary today, the Arthur L. Carter Journalism...
On the occasion of its 100th anniversary today, the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University put together a list of what it calls the "100 Outstanding Journalists in the United States in the Last 100 Years.” Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward are there. So is Seymour Hersh. And the great David Halberstam. Along with Howard Cosell. (Don't ask me to explain that one.) You'll see a lot of familiar names, and some not so familiar, such as Richard Harding Davis. It's fairly New York-oriented, but then so is journalism, and so is...
Last year, when I (@praeburn) came home from ScienceOnline2011 (#scio11), I told my wife, Elizabeth (@devitaraeburn) that it was the most exciting meeting I thought I'd ever attended. "The energy was incredible," I told her. "I got so many ideas. And I met all...
Last year, when I (@praeburn) came home from ScienceOnline2011 (#scio11), I told my wife, Elizabeth (@devitaraeburn) that it was the most exciting meeting I thought I'd ever attended. "The energy was incredible," I told her. "I got so many ideas. And I met all kinds of people whom I knew only from Twitter." I mentioned some and pointed her to their blogs. "You have to follow these people!" I said.
Many of them, I told her, were so excited about their writing that they were doing it for nothing other than the sheer joy of putting words to pixels. How they fed, clothed, and sheltered themselves was an obvious question, but few seemed to be starving, at least while the conference food was available; most were dressed, as far as I recall; and most seemed to have found a way to snag a room at the hotel. (I didn't see anything like an Occupy ScienceOnline tent city outside the hotel.) The 250 slots at last year's conference filled...
Gary Schwitzer's ...
Gary Schwitzer's Health News Review sets a high bar for what makes a good medical story, as we all should. Not many stories reviewed by Schwitzer and his team come through with a perfect score, and plenty fail dramatically.
But a website redesign now allows Health News Review to play with its statistics, from reviews of more than 1,600 stories. And here's the good news: When comparing the most recent 800 stories with the 800 previous stories, the stats show improvement in 8 of the 10 categories Schwitzer uses to rate them.
..."There has never been a golden age of science journalism, but certainly there were more characters, better writers, more newsgathering zeal, and more originality in the recent past."
"There has never been a golden age of science journalism, but certainly there were more characters, better writers, more newsgathering zeal, and more originality in the recent past."
So writes a critic on The Huffington Post. Those are fighting words--and tired words. We've heard these criticisms before, and I should probably ignore them, but, as The Dude put it in The Big Lebowski, "This will not stand, man."
The critic is David Whitehouse, whose HuffPo bio says that he is an astrophysicist, a former BBC science correspondent, and the author of four books. Despite those bona fides, his criticism echoes down the line as if it were coming to us via a bad connection from the 20th Century.
He begins his argument with the contention that "science, and communicating science, is too...
Update: The patient who alerted me to the subject of this post asked that her name...
Update: The patient who alerted me to the subject of this post asked that her name be removed, which I've done.--PR
Last week, I received an email raising questions about a press release put out by the Wellcome Trust on Dec. 20, 2010. The author of the email brought this to the Tracker's attention because she has suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. She said in an email that she has no connection to the story or any of the participants.
The release's headline is "Chronic fatigue syndrome is not caused by XMRV."
And the release says, at the outset, without qualification, "A virus previously thought to be associated with chronic fatigue syndrome is not the cause of the disease, a detailed study has shown."
XMRV is the...
15Dec 2010
On the track today, the tracker remarked that it was hard to find bylines with some recent...
On the track today, the tracker remarked that it was hard to find bylines with some recent AP stories. There is a reason for that. One of the suddenly anonymous tipped me off to this:
Press release - News Media Guild
Dec. 14
NEW YORK – Hundreds of journalists at The Associated Press are taking part in a national “byline boycott” and are signing a petition protesting proposed cuts at the news cooperative.
Guild members and supporters are removing their bylines from news stories and photo credits. They’re also demonstrating unity by wearing red shirts and signing a petition asking AP management to reconsider a pension plan freeze and increases in medical payments by more...
For those who have followed my discussions here about industry-produced blog posts...
For those who have followed my discussions here about industry-produced blog posts at ScienceBlogs and at Forbes, you might be interested to know that this is not a new phenomenon. Long before "blog" entered our lexicon, E.B. White, the eminent prose stylist--who, to my knowledge, was not especially known as a defender of journalistic mores--railed against a similar situation in Esquire magazine--in 1976!
David Cay Johnston reminds us of the episode,...
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