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...
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...
10May 2013
“What if news organizations confronted the reality that nearly all media will be ‘social media’ a decade hence?…What if news organizations acknowledged this — or even got out in front of it, ahead of the curve this time — and organized themselves as platforms for...
“What if news organizations confronted the reality that nearly all media will be ‘social media’ a decade hence?…What if news organizations acknowledged this — or even got out in front of it, ahead of the curve this time — and organized themselves as platforms for talent?”
So begins a post at the Nieman Journalism Lab in which John Wihbeyin of the Harvard Kennedy School talks to Nicco Mele about his new book, "The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath." Mele, a lecturer at the Kennedy School and the Internet operations director for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential...
I am among many with a specific sort of OCD - habitually fetching up the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado for the latest measure of Arctic sea ice extent. Sometimes I hunt further, to check estimates of the volume of the sea ice up there...
I am among many with a specific sort of OCD - habitually fetching up the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado for the latest measure of Arctic sea ice extent. Sometimes I hunt further, to check estimates of the volume of the sea ice up there. Those latter measures are scarier, but have bigger error bars. The maps of extent are from real data, from satellites, with only enough modeling to translate the percentage of grid squares that have ice on them into a sharp-edged map of the ice's expanse. They are easily read, whereas maps of ice thickness, however more disturbing, are messy things (The Polar Science Center at U. of Washington keeps such data).
Why bring this up? There is no objective news reason to round up media stories on the Arctic's climate markers rght now. But...
In a terrific recent piece, Columbia Journalism Review's Curtis Brainard takes apart the history of media coverage of false claims linking vaccination to development disorders such as autism. Brainard doesn't mince words about the...
In a terrific recent piece, Columbia Journalism Review's Curtis Brainard takes apart the history of media coverage of false claims linking vaccination to development disorders such as autism. Brainard doesn't mince words about the frequently shoddy coverage of the issue: "The consequences of this coverage go beyond squandering journalistic coverage on a bogus story. There is an evidence that a fear of a link between vaccines and autism, stoked by press coverage, caused some parents to either delay vaccinations for their children or deny them altogether."
In his four-page piece, Brainard acknowledges the central role of researchers, such as the now debunked work of Andrew Wakefield, whose (now retracted) 1998 Lancet paper is often considered the starting point for the recent wave of anti-vaccination fervor. But he doesn't let Wakefield's own behavior excuse that of...
Ed Yong, one of the more followed and respected of science bloggers, stopped by the Knight Science Journalism program via Skype the other day and chatted with the Fellows. I think the talk was illuminating enough to post on our site....
Ed Yong, one of the more followed and respected of science bloggers, stopped by the Knight Science Journalism program via Skype the other day and chatted with the Fellows. I think the talk was illuminating enough to post on our site. Take a look.
Phil Hilts
David Corcoran, the editor of Science Times at The New York Times, got a break when he opened an email with the first draft of "...
David Corcoran, the editor of Science Times at The New York Times, got a break when he opened an email with the first draft of "In Pursuit of an Underwater Menagerie," this week's lead story in Science Times.
The story was written by C. Drew Harvell, a Cornell scientist who had not written for the Times before, and Corcoran wasn't sure what to expect. What he found was a lovely description of Octopus ornatus, "a foot-long creature in an amber shade of orange with bright white spots and dashes along all its arms." The story continued:
It sat stolidly in the light of the camera, 30 feet below the surface, unfazed by the attention. I reached out a...
It's been seven years since the conservative Canadian government led by prime minister Stephen Harper started to put muzzles on federal employees who stray from the script when talking to the media. This prominently includes scientists and other researchers who might have opinions on interesting things,...
It's been seven years since the conservative Canadian government led by prime minister Stephen Harper started to put muzzles on federal employees who stray from the script when talking to the media. This prominently includes scientists and other researchers who might have opinions on interesting things, such as the nation's energy policies, wildlife and land management, climate trends, medical research priorities, and some things that are interesting just because they are interesting including odd animal behavior or astronomy or autocratic psychological syndromes.
Nonetheless it remains a shock every time when reading again how deeply into its government institutions has penetratede the fervor to put barriers between scientists and reporters or other members of the public. Knight trackers have of course taken note of the disarray in scientists' freedom to talk directly with the Canadia public before (including posts by Deb Blum (...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Argentinean La Nación published and extensive report acknowledging the state of the biotech industry in the country. It highlights the connection between researchers and industry, it describes specific examples, and it says that 124 companies export to more than 120...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Argentinean La Nación published and extensive report acknowledging the state of the biotech industry in the country. It highlights the connection between researchers and industry, it describes specific examples, and it says that 124 companies export to more than 120 countries. In Folha (Brazil) we read that patents will gain value in researcher’s academic cv. Peruvian and Brazilian governments are disputing the use of the '.amazon' domain with online retailer Amazon, arguing the name should be used to promote the protection of the Amazonian rainforest. Colombia launched a $300 million plan to protect its biodiversity, and El Tiempo wrote an enthusiastic editorial about it. Chilean El Mercurio published also a great story about biodiversity, and SciDev reviewed an article comparing the health inequalities in different Latin American Countries (Cuba is the country with less disparities, Haiti has the most). Spanish news...
A careful and important blog post about a new research initiative at the National Institute of Mental Health has become,...
A careful and important blog post about a new research initiative at the National Institute of Mental Health has become, in the hands of New Scientist, a "bombshell" that "denounced" the forthcoming update of the psychiatric diagnostic manual.
This histrionic description seems out of character for New Scientist, which is ordinarily a very good science magazine. Here's the lede:
The world's biggest mental health research institute is abandoning the new version of psychiatry's "bible" – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, questioning its validity and stating that "patients with mental disorders deserve better." This bombshell comes just weeks before the...
Your tracker correspondent must confess to knowing little about Al Jazeera, other than that it's a private company with headquarters in Qatar, has grown steadily into an international news agency with a large staff, and has picked up awards and other accolades. It gets lots of scoops, particularly...
Your tracker correspondent must confess to knowing little about Al Jazeera, other than that it's a private company with headquarters in Qatar, has grown steadily into an international news agency with a large staff, and has picked up awards and other accolades. It gets lots of scoops, particularly from the Arab as well as broader Islamic world, but aims to appeal to a broad audience. (By the way and having nothing to do with this post but it comes to mind: an Al Jazeera man is one of next year's Knight Fellows).
I came across the following story via a tweet-sized squib from Boing Boing's science editor Maggie Koerth-Baker, thought the topic interesting if not quite news journalism, took a look at it and despite my confessed ignorance of the outlet found myself saying, "this is at Al Jazeera?"...
In a page-one story on sharply rising suicide rates in middle-aged Americans, Tara Parker-Pope blames "years of economic worry and easy access to prescription...
In a page-one story on sharply rising suicide rates in middle-aged Americans, Tara Parker-Pope blames "years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers" for making baby boomers particularly vulnerable.
From 1999 to 2010, she reports, "the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7," and "the most profound increases were seen among men in their 50s, among whom suicide rates jumped by nearly 50 percent, to about 30 per 100,000."
Before we get to the speculation about the reasons for this, let's look at the numbers. Why write "nearly 30 percent" when it's shorter and more accurate to write "28.4 percent," which is what the CDC reported in...
3May 2013
In On Science Blogs this week, Tabitha M. Powledge goes viral, wrapping up comments and insights into the H7N9 virus, the new SARS-like coronavirus, the seasonal flu in the U.S., and even a bit about why these viruses cause such alarm.
She points to...
In On Science Blogs this week, Tabitha M. Powledge goes viral, wrapping up comments and insights into the H7N9 virus, the new SARS-like coronavirus, the seasonal flu in the U.S., and even a bit about why these viruses cause such alarm.
She points to a useful guide on how to read the news about these bugs, posted by Maryn McKenna at her Wired magazine blog, Superbug.
If all of that is too much for you, she also sends you to a post with instructions for making a model of DNA out of licorice whips and jelly babies--and if you don't know what they are, you haven't been watching Dr. Who.
-Paul Raeburn
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,...
A classy new science magazine called Nautilus makes its debut this week, with the first of what will be monthly single-topic issues released serially in "chapters" each Thursday.
According to its press release...
A classy new science magazine called Nautilus makes its debut this week, with the first of what will be monthly single-topic issues released serially in "chapters" each Thursday.
According to its press release on PR Newswire, Nautilus "weaves leading-edge science, culture and philosophy into a single story told by the world's leading thinkers and writers." It will include "reported features, narrative non-fiction, essays, blog posts and interviews--as well as fiction, graphic stories, and interactive widgets and games," the release says.
"Nautilus connects science to our lives, one mind-expanding topic at a time," the release says. "Join us." It is being launched with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, which funds a variety of projects on science and religion.
So far,...
2May 2013
We've received several messages asking what happened to the daily Tracker email alerts.
Yes, they're gone, lost in a move to a new server. We're working to get them up and running again as soon as possible.
Well, that's not quite right. None of us at the Tracker...
We've received several messages asking what happened to the daily Tracker email alerts.
Yes, they're gone, lost in a move to a new server. We're working to get them up and running again as soon as possible.
Well, that's not quite right. None of us at the Tracker is doing anything except to periodically send short notes to the computer people deep within MIT, who say they are "actively working on this issue."
Wish us luck. And thanks for noticing.
-Paul Raeburn
©2010 Knight Science Journalism at MIT. All Rights Reserved.