Yesterday, I wrote about why many pieces about the need for investigative science journalism don’t acknowledge the factors behind its scarcity. Conversations about investigations in science journalism often seem to assume that reporters don’t see critiquing science as important, but journalists’ individual interests don’t set the tone for journalistic coverage all by themselves. In journalism, …
Month: March 2016
[^^”How do you know?”: The question that science journalists must not forget to ask.] One night about a month ago, I was at a friend’s birthday party, knocking back tequila and rum with assorted MIT-affiliated twentysomethings. Somehow I ended up talking about tardigrades with a post-doc from an uber-spiffy genetics institute. [This is what a …
Today is a big day for me, and not just because my 1st byline for The Atlantic went live today. Although seriously, go check it out. It’s also special because I just went on record announcing my intention to compile a quarterly “Best Shortform Science Writing” roundup, so that us science writing whippersnappers can see …
[Photo by Yale Rosen, via Creative Commons] “Pitch Imperfect” is a series of blog posts where I highlight stories that I pitched but didn’t quite sell and discuss why it was tough to sell them. The goal is to share both interesting research stories and some of the obstacles in getting them into the news …