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MIT physicist and historian David Kaiser, who heads KSJ’s home department (the Program in Science, Technology, and Society), is someone who appreciates the power of mass communication. Last week, essays by Kaiser turned up in both the Huffington Post and The New York Times

The first piece, “Of Black Holes and Glittering Stars: The Theory of Everything and Hollywood Physics”*, recounts Kaiser’s experiences at the recent Washington, D.C., premiere of The Theory of Everything, the new film about the early career of cosmologist Stephen Hawking. At the event, sponsored by the American Physical Society, Kaiser talked with English actor Eddie Redmayne, who plays Hawking in the film, and even posed with him on the red carpet.

Kaiser says he liked the film for its sensitive portrayal of the relationship between Hawking and his wife Jane (played by Felicity Jones) across the tumultous years in the early 1960s when Hawking was beginning his forays into theoretical physics, even even as he began to battle amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative motor neuron disease.

*New York Times …

If you’re a journalist and you spend too much time listening to magazine editors talking about falling advertising and subscription revenues, or checking Columbia Journalism Review or Romenesko for updates on the latest newsroom closures, it’s easy to get discouraged about your career choice.

But now is not the time to lose heart—and in this short post I’m going to tell you why. First, though, a word of congratulations. If you’re reading this blog, that probably means you chose science, health, environment, or technology reporting as your career. So: kudos to you. It’s a noble calling and one that will only get more and more critical to the health of democratic societies as the century progresses.

In fact, the Knight Science Journalism program exists specifically to help people like you. Each year we work to introduce our Fellows to people, ideas, and themes that will enrich their work after their Fellowship year. We push them to grow and become even better at what they do. We give them time and space to add to fund of knowledge, skills, and perspective they’ll need in order to serve their audiences in the tumultuous decades ahead …

Editor’s Note: The following submission is from Barbara Moran, Knight Science Journalism Fellows Class of 2002. All KSJ alumni are welcome to send in news and updates: please contact wroush@mit.edu.

In September, I joined Boston University as the Senior Science Writer on their [Research website] (http://www.bu.edu/research), and I may have finally found my science writing home. I’ve worked for places that are edgy but have no content; and others that are solid on science but dry as dust. BU is the best of both worlds: they want strong science writing and bold design, and don’t shy away from controversy.

A great example is the e-cigarette package “Behind the Vapor” they put together for the website launch. BU has two top-notch researchers who study the personal and public health risks of e-cigarettes. Sara Rimer, who spent 26 years at the New York Times before coming to BU, wrote a feature article and pulled together two Q&A’s. The video team anchored the stories with an edgy video about e-cigs hosted by a scruffy undergrad, and the design team packaged it with stunning graphics and …