After 20 years of promoting excellence in journalism on families, the University of Maryland’s Journalism Center on Children and Families will close at the end of 2014. In a post last month, the center’s director, Julie Drizin, wrote that the center’s funding will run out at the end of the year, and the university’s Philip […]
On Science Blogs: Grim population news; sex; and WordPerfect.
I knew something was off on Friday, and it didn’t have anything to do with Halloween. Finally, after hours of introspection (when I should have been writing), it came to me: Powledge was late. On Science Blogs, which usually appears on Fridays, wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Fortunately, the column, by Tabitha M. Powledge, […]
Newsweek: Did son’s autism drive a woman to murder?
In February, 2010, Gigi Jordan checked into the Peninsula Hotel in New York where, she has admitted, “she intentionally gave her 8-year-old son a fatal overdose of drugs,” according to The New York Times. She described it as “a mercy killing.” Her trial for murder is continuing in New York; the defense summarized its case on […]
NPR disbanded its climate and energy team–and nobody noticed.
It seems nobody noticed until last Friday, but National Public Radio has disbanded its four-member climate and energy team. In January, Vikki Valentine, the team’s editor, was reassigned to lead global health and development coverage. (NPR’s media relations director, Isabel Lara, said that “includes global climate and environment stories.”) In March, one of the team’s […]
Move over, Amazon: PBS, Harper’s mag in ad war?
While the publishing world has been trying–and failing–to come up with a strategy to defeat Amazon in its war against Hachette, another media battle has been joined by people who should know better. Columbia Journalism Review reported earlier this month that PBS–the home of NOVA, Frontline, Mediashift, Newshour, and dozens of others–pulled its ads from […]
Editor’s pick: The best 10 essays since 1950.
Robert Atwan, the founder of The Best American Essays series, has put together a list for Publishersweekly.com of the 10 best essays since 1950. Tracker readers will be glad to hear that a few examples of fine science writing made the cut. Some of these pieces are well known to anyone who’s had a few […]