Ben Yagoda lists seven tricks of the trade from stand-up comedy and explains how writers can apply them: "For a comic, a punchline is the funny part. For writers, it's a word, phrase, or detail with impact: could be funny, could be dramatic, could be shocking, or it could merely have an emphatic sound. Because of the impact, the temptation is to put it at the front. Comedians teach us to wait." Also, what writers can learn from Goodnight Moon.
Science writing news
"The US is now launched remarkably casually on a vast experiment with several scary scientific unknowns," Tabitha M. Powledge writes in her weekly science blogs roundup. Even as one state after another legalizes marijuana for medical use — and more, in Colorado and Washington — not much is known about how, and whether, it works, because of "severe constraints on serious cannabis research." Also, Google's underwhelming new project, and Retraction Watch gets noticed.
Writing on SciLogs, Kirk Englehardt recounts a career change that eventually led him to a research communications job at a major university. Englehardt offers this advice to students — especially those who are pursuing advanced degrees in research but considering a course change into science communications: "Don’t listen to anyone who tells you communication is a 'lesser' career than research. Communication is a science, an important one with real-world impact."
The latest round of journalistic shoplifting prompts this Jack Shafer post: "Plagiarism is not a crime against the journalists whose passages have been stolen. It’s a crime against readers, who have every right to believe that journalists vouch for the copy they serve … Disdain the plagiarist because he traffics in the counterfeit. His greatest crime is wasting your time." More from Margaret Sullivan, Dan Duray.
Ann Friedman has noticed something peculiar about the pitches she gets from public relations professionals: "The job of producing hard-hitting, democracy-protecting journalism is still, statistically speaking, the domain of men. Most newsrooms are more than 60 percent men, whereas 73 to 85 percent of PR professionals are women, depending on how you tally it." Friedman attributes the disparity to the lingering "stereotype that public relations is not a serious job."
Inside Climate News won a Pulitzer for its environmental reporting, but that award doesn't seem to matter to the Environmental Protection Agency. Lisa Song and Jim Morris write about the refusal of top EPA officials to speak on the record: "Our problems with the EPA are not unusual. Earlier this month, 38 journalism and communications organizations wrote a joint letter to President Obama urging him to put 'an end to this restraint on communication in federal agencies.'"
We have resent personalized voting invitations to all regular members who have not yet voted for the 2014-16 board. Meet the candidates by reading the full article, clicking here for a PDF with photos and bios, or perusing the summer issue of ScienceWriters magazine.
Beth Macy reviews the process of writing her just-released book, Factory Man, including the two weeks she she spent in the "corn crib:" "My goal had been to write a business book that did not read like a business book — something that my octogenarian mom could read in order to finally understand why so many of the once-thriving factory towns she grew up in, and near, now look like ghost towns, with soaring rates of disability, food insecurity and underemployment."
Tabitha M. Powledge writes about CRISPR, a new "natural" genetic engineering method that is touted as being more acceptable to anti-GMO activists. Powledge has her doubts: "It’s hard to imagine they will be converted to the cause of genetic modification because the methodology is based loosely on a technique bacteria evolved billions of years ago." Also, did a leading anti-GMO activist really publish a hit list of prominent science writers?