(A Highly Subjective Round-up of Standout Science News) [Above: Header from an 1884 science magazine called Knowledge, led by British astronomer Richard Anthony Proctor. Its tagline reads: “A magazine of science: plainly worded – exactly described.” Image via Wikimedia Commons & public domain.] Late January 2017 saw a shift in science journalism so subtle that …
Best Shortform Science Writing October-December 2016 (A Highly Subjective Round-up of Standout Science News) [Above: A fish-eyed view of a newsstand in Paris. Photo by Mark Mitchell via Flickr & Creative Commons 2.0 License] Science writing at its best doesn’t just impart facts; it has the potential to change the way we think about issues …
[Inside the Alamo. Photo by Jerald Jackson via Flickr & CC 2.0, My own Alamo photos did not come out this pretty.] This past weekend, I spent three and a half days at the National Association of Science Writers meeting in San Antonio, Texas. If you’ve never been to a Science Writers conference, here’s what …
(A Highly Subjective Round-up of Standout Science News) The online science news ecosystem teems with blog posts and videos about animals doing interesting things. And why not? Animals are fascinating, adorable, and beloved by the science nerds who frequent science news websites. Many of those stories are well-written. So when you’re sitting down to choose …
[Illustration by Fredik Walloe via Flickr & CC 2.0] A few days ago, I posted Part 1 of an informal guide to rocking interviews with journalists about your science. That post covers what to do before an interview; this post focuses on the During and the After. Step 5: Invite Co-Authors Along. [Photo via UBC …
[A woman interviewing a Lego Sculpture. Photo by Matt Brown via Flickr & Creative Commons 2.0] Let’s say you’re a young lab leader or grad student and you’ve just gotten an email from a journalist asking if you can speak to them about your upcoming paper. You haven’t heard of this reporter before. You ‘re …
[Image by Ozzy Delaney via Flickr & Creative Commons] Movies. They’re the stuff of fiction, and scientists love to make fun of those darn Hollywood writers. (The Core, anyone?) How dare they abuse and twist the science to hit a plot point? Journalism is supposed to be an emphatic move away from fiction. But I’d argue that …
(A Highly Subjective Round-up of Standout Science News) [Photo above by Raúl Hernández González via Flickr & Creative Commons] How short is a shortform piece of journalism? Under 250 words? Where does that leave all the pieces clocking in at 500, 700, or 1200 words? Those were the first questions that reared their heads when …
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, …
[^^”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 …