Curtis Brainard, the science-news critic at the Columbia Journalism Review, is among several editors laid off or being threatened with layoffs following the departure of the magazine's editor, according to a report at...
Category: science journalism
Curtis Brainard, the science-news critic at the Columbia Journalism Review, is among several editors laid off or being threatened with layoffs following the departure of the magazine's editor, according to a report at capitalnewyork.com. Brainard directs and writes for CJR's The Observatory, which describes itself as "a lens on the science press."
AOL's Chris Grosso announced last Thursday in a blog post that Cyndi Stivers, CJR's editor, would become editor-in-chief of AOL.com. Joe Pompeo of...
At the National Association of Science Writers' annual meeting in Pittsburgh in 2005, Kendall Powell, a young freelance writer, was "soaking her conference-sore feet with three other writers in a huge jet-tub in the hotel's honeymoon suite" while they did one of the things...
At the National Association of Science Writers' annual meeting in Pittsburgh in 2005, Kendall Powell, a young freelance writer, was "soaking her conference-sore feet with three other writers in a huge jet-tub in the hotel's honeymoon suite" while they did one of the things writers do best: complain.
"I complained that while I met so many interesting colleagues at conferences, and always loved talking shop with them, it was difficult to keep up that camaraderie once we headed home," she writes. Online groups, she thought, were too impersonal. But would a small, more intimate group "serve as a virtual jet-tub"?
Out of that reverie came the birth of an online group known as SciLance, which has grown to 35 members, and out of SciLance came a very good guide to science writing--The Science Writers' Handbook, published this week.
The book, written by the members of SciLance,...
Johns Hopkins has closed its graduate science-writing program, alerting alumni in an e-mail that there will be no class next year. The program's director, ...
Johns Hopkins has closed its graduate science-writing program, alerting alumni in an e-mail that there will be no class next year. The program's director, Ann Finkbeiner, has resigned from the university.
The program has long been recognized as one of the top science-writing graduate programs in the country, along with others at NYU, Boston University, UC Santa Cruz, Columbia, and MIT. Finkbeiner told me in an email that she began teaching there about 1988 and became the program's director around 2000, although she was never a full-time Hopkins employee.
Finkbeiner told Michael Price...
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...
NOVA has an unparalleled reputation and track record for excellence in science journalism on television; no other organization can come close. Yet its attempt to extend its brand to a new science news website--if brand extension is what this is--seems to be off to a very soft start.
NOVA Next...
NOVA has an unparalleled reputation and track record for excellence in science journalism on television; no other organization can come close. Yet its attempt to extend its brand to a new science news website--if brand extension is what this is--seems to be off to a very soft start.
NOVA Next, as the site is called, invited me to review it. On Feb. 28, Tim De Chant, the editor of NOVA Next, welcomed readers by saying NOVA would bring to the web the expertise and passion displayed it displays in its television show. This is how he described the venture:
NOVA Next will be focused on big stories, the sort you’re used to hearing from NOVA. We’ll have some of the biggest names in science, technology, and engineering giving us the inside scoop on...
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...
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...
Today's Science Times in The New York Times carries a new column of briefs, a recap of some of the past week's science news. The Week, as it's called, is...
Today's Science Times in The New York Times carries a new column of briefs, a recap of some of the past week's science news. The Week, as it's called, is written by Jennifer A. Kingson, whose Twitter account identifies her as a science editor at the Times.
In a brief intro, Kingson hints that she will skip the major stories of the week in favor of the "developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, [that] often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)"
She quotes an anonymous colleague (why anonymous?) who said, "In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper...
Kalmbach Publishing Company, the owner of Discover magazine, has hired an editor-in-chief to take over when the magazine moves from New York City to Waukesha, Wisconsin at the end of the year.
The new editor, Stephen C. George, is currently an executive editor at the Reader’s Digest...
Kalmbach Publishing Company, the owner of Discover magazine, has hired an editor-in-chief to take over when the magazine moves from New York City to Waukesha, Wisconsin at the end of the year.
The new editor, Stephen C. George, is currently an executive editor at the Reader’s Digest Association Inc. in Greendale, Wis., according to Kalmbach's press release.
Here's more from the press release:
George is the former editor of The Saturday Evening Post. His career includes senior editorial positions at Meredith Corp.’s Better Homes and Gardens and Rodale’s Prevention. George is an experienced health and medicine editor. He oversaw coverage of the topic at Prevention and, earlier in his career, was an associate editor at The New Physician. From 1999 to 2002, he was USA Today’s health/science columnist for its USA Weekend newspaper...
26Nov 2012
This morning, as I sat down to browse through today's possibilities for the Tracker, I came across a nice little science story out of Stanford. Two researchers "have successfuly enabled a pair of rhesus...
This morning, as I sat down to browse through today's possibilities for the Tracker, I came across a nice little science story out of Stanford. Two researchers "have successfuly enabled a pair of rhesus monkeys to move a virtual cursor across a computer screen merely by thinking about their response to human commands," the story reports.
This is not something I would ordinarily have picked out for the Tracker--it's a competent piece, but not remarkable. What was remarkable was the byline: David Perlman.
Perlman has been filing stories for more than 80 years, since he used a mimeograph machine to launch a newspaper in junior high school. He has worked at the San Francisco Chronicle since 1940--72 years ago. Perlman turned 90 in 2009, a...
Two years ago, Florida Atlantic University asked me to launch a graduate program in science writing. I was delighted to have the opportunity to design a program from scratch and to pass along to students much of what I've learned during the years I've been a science writer.
Sadly, the program came to...
Two years ago, Florida Atlantic University asked me to launch a graduate program in science writing. I was delighted to have the opportunity to design a program from scratch and to pass along to students much of what I've learned during the years I've been a science writer.
Sadly, the program came to an end just as it was about to begin, the victim of university politics that had nothing to do with me or with the program.
For more on what happened, see my brief account in the current issue of ScienceWriters, the official publication of the National Association of Science Writers.
-Paul Raeburn
MRSA--methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus--is a bad thing, an often lethal microbe untouchable by standard antibiotics.
Genome sequencing is a good thing, offering us glimpses into the inner workings of organisms and hints about how to defeat such things as MRSA.
Genome sequencing has not,...
MRSA--methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus--is a bad thing, an often lethal microbe untouchable by standard antibiotics.
Genome sequencing is a good thing, offering us glimpses into the inner workings of organisms and hints about how to defeat such things as MRSA.
Genome sequencing has not, however, enabled researchers to rid the world, or even a community, of MRSA.
But you can read otherwise at redorbit.com, which describes itself as "the premier internet destination for space, science, health, and technology enthusiasts around the globe." In a piece published last week, redorbit reports that researchers "put an end to MRSA superbug after successful genome sequencing."
In the story, Lawrence LeBlond writes:
Using the advanced...
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...
It's unclear how the Discover blogger Ed Yong finds time to blog, considering all the reading he has to do to assemble posts like today's ...
It's unclear how the Discover blogger Ed Yong finds time to blog, considering all the reading he has to do to assemble posts like today's Happy Ada Lovelace Day--a celebration of women science writers.
I spend a lot of time hanging with this crowd of writers online, but I don't keep up nearly as well as Yong does--and some of those he seems very familiar with are entirely new to me. I have a lot of homework to do.
And so should you. Please thank Yong for this incredible feast of science writing, and enjoy yourself.
-Paul Raeburn
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