Are your sentences too long? Do you overuse adverbs? Do you use "that" to refer to a person? Betsy Mikel lists 25 tips for finding and fixing those flaws and others in your writing. An example: "In about 5 percent of your sentences (total guess from the grammar police), 'that' makes your idea easier to understand. In the other 95 percent, get rid of it. 'I decided that journalism was a good career for me,' reads better as, 'I decided journalism was a good career for me.'"
Science writing news
The Richmond Standard, a news web site in Richmond, Calif., is "one of the more polished sites to emerge in the age of hyper-local digital news brands," Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson writes. Then he explains: "That may be because it is run and funded by Chevron, the $240 billion oil group which owns the Richmond refinery that in August 2012 caught fire, spewing plumes of black smoke over the city and sending more than 15,000 residents to hospital for medical help."
Kent Anderson uses a recent Yellowstone story to illustrate what happens when news bypasses the mainstream filters via social media. An inaccurate seismometer reading set off a deluge of end-of-the-world stories focusing on the nation's first national park: "Again and again, science gets distorted when it hits the public mainstream," Anderson writes. "This is partially because when people hear facts, they impose whatever story they prefer to make sense of them."
The first problem Francie Diep ran into in her survey of minority science writers was finding them: "I received only 46 responses from U.S.-based respondents, itself a telling statistic." Diep nevertheless parsed the results for some conclusions about the obstacles to diversity (low pay being among them), examples of bias for and against minorities, and the state of efforts to promote diversity.
When a team of business leaders issued a recent report on the costs of climate change, the subject moved out of the science pages, Robert S. Eshelman writes: "The novelty of the report was that it talked relatively little about science and more about what this whole threat is going to cost us," Eshelman writes. "And with this shift in focus — from the physics of climate change to its financial consequences — came a subtle yet perhaps significant change in media coverage."
Lucia Moses interviews a "veteran freelance writer who has written for top women’s magazines" but now writes "native advertising" for much better rates: "At least with native advertising, it’s saying, sponsored by Chipotle, sponsored by GE, sponsored by Coca-Cola," the unnamed writer says. Also, do readers notice the disclosures? Do they even care about native ads? And Gene Weingarten recounts how he once fought back.
It's the 40th anniversary of Robert Caro's landmark biography of Robert Moses, and Scott Porch explains how Caro dealt with the challenge of his uncooperative subject: "He drew a series of concentric circles on a page with a single dot — Robert Moses — in the center. The first circle was Moses’ family and friends, the next circle was people in regular contact, and so on, to an outer circle of people who knew Moses, and dealt with him, and were willing to discuss it."
Rachel Grate discusses a line of research suggesting that the act of writing — even bad writing — can improve the writer's physical and mental health: "You don't have to be a serious novelist or constantly reflecting on your life's most traumatic moments to get these great benefits. Even blogging or journaling is enough to see results. One study found that blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to the effect from running or listening to music."
Jane Friedman discusses how authors can promote their work on social media, and how to use tools like Google Analytics to gauge the results of their efforts: "How extensive should you really get — and is it possible that 'less is more?' I interpret this question to mean: When is enough enough? And how do I make any effort worth my time? Answering this question requires stepping back — waaaay back — and looking at how and why authors use social media in the first place."