A Mizzou graduate student talked to six narrative journalists, including Amy Harmon of the New York Times, who wrote about work on genetically modified oranges: "I like just being an observer in people's lives, and getting them to trust me, and writing stuff that's kind of intimate and trying to understand how these science issues are playing out in people's lives, up close." Also interviewed were Anne Hull, Lane DeGregory, David Finkel, Tom Hallman, and Chris Jones.
Science writing news
A book's cover is the face it shows the world and an important part of its marketing, designer Kimberly Glyder says in an interview with author Therese Walsh about the cover for Walsh's novel The Moon Sisters: "My job is to be more evocative rather than specific," Glyder says. "We’re trying to get book buyers to pick up a book in a store or 'click' on the book online. What may work as a literal interpretation of the writing is sometimes not commercially viable."
Brevity may be a virtue, but not when it comes to your bio, Jane Friedman writes in a guide to the different types of bios — long, short, custom — and how to write them: "For some writers with short bios, it’s an attempt to convey status. Other writers may be putting on that 'mysterious' act … but as an editor and curious person, the message I take away from the writer of the short bio is: 'I don’t care about, nor do I need, you or your opportunities.'”
The problem with blogs is the lack of editing, The Orchid Thief author says in a podcast quoted by Jim Romenesko: "I still feel that there's more value in trying really hard to find somewhere where you're going to write and have to kind of square off with another perspective — somebody who says, 'This doesn't make sense to me,' or, 'Why are you writing this piece?' or, 'This lede just doesn't engage me.' A blog just doesn't offer you that."
William M. London takes apart a Bakersfield TV station's credulous report on a local doctor who turned to "natural remedies and spiritual healing" after his terminal cancer diagnosis: "Perhaps viewers would have been interested in a follow-up story to see how long Dr. Dulan maintained his healing program and avoided use of prescription medication," London writes, before disclosing that Dulan died just two months later. More from Gary Schwitzer.
If you use Twitter's trending topics list to keep up with breaking news, read this Wall Street Journal story about the brisk trade in phony Twitter accounts: "The fake accounts remain a cloud over Twitter Inc. in the wake of its successful initial public offering. 'Twitter is where many people get news,' says Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. 'If what is trending on Twitter is being faked by robots, people need to know that.'"
Just when you think you've gotten the hang of this grammar thing, somebody goes and changes it. From the Atlantic's Megan Garber comes news that linguists are accepting a new role for "because." Garber says you can blame the social media culture's affinity for efficiency and irony: "I'm late because YouTube. You're reading this because procrastination. As the language writer Stan Carey delightfully sums it up: '"Because" has become a preposition, because grammar.'"
"It’s a statistic that belongs in the journalistic category of Too Good to Check," Tabitha M. Powledge writes of the assertion that 90% of the cells in a human body are non-human microbes. In her weekly science blogs roundup, Powledge reviews a bioinformatician's post on the origins of that factoid, and summarizes the debate over its accuracy. Also: Does some new research on transgenerational epigenetics in male mice mean Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was right after all?
It's a simple yet flexible tool for copyright compliance, but most media professionals who use Creative Commons licenses aren't following the rules, Sarah Laskow writes: "Material licensed under CC isn't just free stuff. James Bond had license to kill. CC is your license to copy. And although using CC is not as dangerous as using a .25 Beretta three martinis deep, there are conditions, there are risks, and there are, occasionally, consequences for breaking the rules."