KSJ News & Events

It’s 9:45 am and my brain is at its most alert. So it’s a good time to write this post announcing that Rachael Buchanan, medical producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation and a 2014-15 Knight Science Journalism Fellow, is part of a team that just won the Endocrine Society’s Excellence in Journalism Award.

The team was recognized for the BBC News Day of the Body Clock, a project that united the BBC’s radio, television, and online channels for a 24-hour examination of the human endocrine system’s diurnal rhythms and the way modern living sometimes conflicts with what our bodies are is telling us about when to eat, sleep, work, exercise, and fiddle with our smartphones.

Buchanan’s colleague James Gallagher, health editor for the BBC News website, traveled to the West Coast to pick up the award at a March 4 ceremony at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in San Diego.

The society created the award to recognize “outstanding reporting that enhances public understanding of medical and science issues pertaining to the field of endocrinology.” Past winners include publications such as *Science News …

As a science journalist you cover a lot of stories over the years. Some wash over you without leaving much of a mark and some stick with you for eternity. Yesterday one of those eternal stories—probably the story that has been the strongest thread across my 17 year career—took a huge leap forward. British MPs voted to allow the creation of babies that have DNA from three people—so-called three-person IVF. If the second house of the UK Parliament—the House of Lords—also supports the measure the UK will be the first country in the world to approve such a procedure and the first baby could be born next year.

I have been covering this research for a decade and it is a rich and complex subject involving a devastating disease, some heartrending personal stories, truly amazing science and a complex ethical debate that has thoroughly tested the regulatory system in the UK …

For writers, part of the fuss about the Web explosion of the late 1990s was that it was finally possible to cut out the middlemen. Blogs meant you could reach readers immediately and directly, without all the usual apparatus of the commercial media—editors, publishers, advertisers, circulation managers—getting in the way.

Whether professional writers could turn a direction connection with their readers into a real living was a different question. In practice, most journalists who were attracted to the immediacy of blogs, including myself, wound up working for online or hybrid print/online publications that ran their businesses on advertising, or on some combination of advertising, corporate underwriting, and event revenue.

Much later, with the advent of off-the-shelf paywall and subscription software, writers could once again think about selling their ideas directly to the readers most willing to pay. But very few journalists have actually tried this. Andrew Sullivan is a famous example (though his publication The Dish now seems poised to shut down). Many in San Francisco/Silicon Valley are watching online-only tech news site TheInformation.com to see whether its creator Jessica Lessin, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, can persuade a critical mass of technology industry insiders to pay $399 per year for her publication. TheInformation promises subscribers an inside view of the trends shaping the computer, software, mobile, and Internet industries. “No aggregation, no bullshit,” the site says. “We only write articles that matter to our subscribers and are backed by exclusive reporting.”

Now biotech industry insiders have a similar option: the Timmerman Report. Unveiled yesterday by veteran journalist Luke Timmerman, a Knight Science Journalism Fellow in 2005-06, it’s a subscription-only publication aimed at professionals in the life sciences industry. Timmerman is the sole staffer, and he’s charging $99 per year.

It’s a daring career move, considering that …