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...
Category: science writing
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...
10Apr 2013
Journalism is built upon shortcuts. Not always, and not everywhere. Long stories can be deliberately--and effectively--discursive. But daily news items rely on shortcuts to get the job done in as little time as possible.
Take, for example,...
Journalism is built upon shortcuts. Not always, and not everywhere. Long stories can be deliberately--and effectively--discursive. But daily news items rely on shortcuts to get the job done in as little time as possible.
Take, for example, an obit today for Robert Edwards, one of the developers of in-vitro fertilization. The obit was written by AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng. It begins, "Robert Edwards, a Nobel prizewinner from Britain...died Wednesday at age 87."
"Nobel prizewinner" is a shortcut. It tells us in two words (I'd make it three) that Edwards likely did good and important research, and that he was probably well known. A couple of grafs later, the story says that Edwards and his late colleague, Patrick Steptoe, were "accused of playing...
26Feb 2013
It's Tuesday, and I'm remiss in not mentioning last Friday's On Science Blogs by Tabitha M. Powledge, as I usually do on Fridays or Mondays.
I was particularly interested in...
It's Tuesday, and I'm remiss in not mentioning last Friday's On Science Blogs by Tabitha M. Powledge, as I usually do on Fridays or Mondays.
I was particularly interested in her discussion in this issue of a philosophical point that I could summarize, I suppose, by saying that we are all Jonah Lehrer. (He's the disgraced journalist who is trying--and so far failing--to resuscitate his cold, dead journalism career.)
Yes, the crack about Lehrer is an overstatement. But here's the point: We're talking not just about the transgressions of a journalistic fabulist, but of the distortions inherent in all of journalism:
...this is not only a failure of the entire field of science reporting, whether on blogs or in published outlets (or both), but of the very field and profession of journalism itself....
The lead story in the opinion pages of yesterday's New York Times was a fine reflection on children and gun violence by Alex Kotlowitz...
The lead story in the opinion pages of yesterday's New York Times was a fine reflection on children and gun violence by Alex Kotlowitz, a distinguished reporter formerly of the Wall Street Journal, and the author of the acclaimed bestseller "There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America," about a violence-plagued public housing project.
Kotlowitz's Sunday piece was entitled "The Price of Public Violence," and it deals with the problem not of children who are murdered, but of those who are wounded or who witness violence. "What is the effect...
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...
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
20Nov 2012
After decrying the failure yesterday of Matter, the new long-form science journalism site, to deliver a story to my Kindle or to give me any help, I found a place at...
After decrying the failure yesterday of Matter, the new long-form science journalism site, to deliver a story to my Kindle or to give me any help, I found a place at a different website--Matter's blog--where I could leave a comment. (I could find no place to contact Matter on its main website.) I left a comment complaining about my Kindle problem and my inability to find help files or contact Matter.
I got a response to the comment last night from Matter's Bobbie Johnson. He pointed out that there is a help file. It's just not part of the site's main navigation bar, which contains the following:
about / articles / blog / account / sign...
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...
Leon Jaroff, the founding editor of Discover magazine, died Saturday at the age of 85, according to The New York Times.
He...
Leon Jaroff, the founding editor of Discover magazine, died Saturday at the age of 85, according to The New York Times.
He ran the magazine for four years, beginning in 1980, after convincing Time Inc.'s editors that they should launch a science magazine. Before launching Discover, he worked at Time magazine, where he noted that newsstand sales jumped when a science story was on the cover. Still, it took him a decade to persuade the editors that such a magazine could be a success.
Discover has had its share of troubles recently, but, at age 32, it has long outlived its competitors, notably Science Digest and Science80/86....
5Oct 2012
Here are a couple of interesting pieces I found as I was preparing to close up shop for the weekend:
Kelly Crowe, a medical reporter at CBC News, has a nice wrap-up of the recent news on...
Here are a couple of interesting pieces I found as I was preparing to close up shop for the weekend:
Kelly Crowe, a medical reporter at CBC News, has a nice wrap-up of the recent news on scientific media misconduct. "We, in the media, make a big deal over a new research finding, but when it turns out to be less exciting, or even wrong after future research, we don't tend to report that. 'Never mind' doesn't usually make it into the news," she writes.
And for those of you who don't follow The Virginia Quarterly Review, you missed a nice history of science writing, written by Robin Marantz Henig. If you didn't know Paul de Kruif was the first modern science writer (and I'm...
Congratulations and salutations to the four winners (including one semi-anonymous team of editor types) of the 2012 NASA Science in Society Awards. Best way to read up on the details is with the NASW's press release that went...
Congratulations and salutations to the four winners (including one semi-anonymous team of editor types) of the 2012 NASA Science in Society Awards. Best way to read up on the details is with the NASW's press release that went out on Friday. In case you missed it and are in a hurry, here they are:
- BOOKS: Seth Mnookin - Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine ; On the baseless fear of vaccines as an autism gateway.
- SCIENCE REPORTING: Center for Public Integrity and National Public Radio teams: : Poisoned Places with versions at CPI and broadcast by...
This beautiful illustration by Rena Ekmanis tells you something about the quality of the work you will find in Science Notes 2012, the valedictory compilation of reporting and illustration by new grads of the UC Santa Cruz...
This beautiful illustration by Rena Ekmanis tells you something about the quality of the work you will find in Science Notes 2012, the valedictory compilation of reporting and illustration by new grads of the UC Santa Cruz science writing program and the science illustration program at nearby Cal State University Monterey Bay.
Each year, Rob Irion, the director of the UC Santa Cruz program, puts together a similar collection, giving the writers and illustrators some nice clips, and promoting the programs. It's a fine way to see what the new graduates are doing, and, if you are an employer, to look at the work of folks you might want to hire.
This year's edition includes a nice story on bamboo bicycles (!) by Amy West, including a brief video and illustrations by...
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