Matt Waite did the computer programming behind the Pulitzer-winning PolitiFact site. Now he's a college professor who recently found himself sitting through a remedial math class. Why? Because, like many of us, he avoided math while studying journalism: “So do me a favor: Try. Stop with the jokes. Stop telling me, 'Oh, I could never do that' when you ask me about math. Because it’s not true. You can. If you try. You can be good at math.”
Science writing news
Authors don't need a fastball, Joel Friedlander writes, but they do need a different kind of "pitch" — a short book summary timed to the length of an elevator ride: "Your book pitch has to accomplish a number of things at the same time, and do them quickly and efficiently. It has to give a good idea of the book’s genre, main hook or distinctive angle, qualifications of the author, comparable books, and why it’s different, exciting, or ground-breaking in some way."
The National Association of Science Writers is pleased to offer a new benefit to its members. "The Fine Print" is a searchable database of writing and editing contracts, donated by members, for other members to read, compare and cite. Members can search the database by type of work, medium, and client category, and for clauses dealing with copyright, warranties, and other provisions. For all rewards of NASW membership, see our member benefits page.
More than a half-century ago, George Plimpton interviewed Ernest Hemingway for the Paris Review and the entire interview is posted here. Plimpton starts with a discussion of his subject tracking his progress on an office wall: "The numbers on the chart showing the daily output of words differ from 450, 575, 462, 1250, back to 512, the higher figures on days Hemingway puts in extra work so he won’t feel guilty spending the following day fishing on the Gulf Stream."
There's a big turnaround in the Authors Guild's long-running fight against Google's plan to scan all the world's books and offer excerpts online. A federal appeals judge dismissed the Guild's lawsuit Thursday, having previously rejected a settlement. Analysis from the New York Times, Technology Review, Gigaon, Inside Higher Ed, and the Guild.
"There's always another great fact out there," writes journalist and shy person Sarah Laskow. In a Scitable post, Laskow explains how her personality helps her reporting: "For me, one trick is to remind myself that, always, inevitably, picking up the phone or going out the door will get me better, more interesting information. Often, I'll get it more quickly than if I tried to find it noodling around the internet. Plus, some of the best information isn't out there yet."
It's been a rough few weeks for the online encyclopedia. First came the revelation that an army of "sockpuppets" — basically, people who were paid to write and edit articles for various sponsors — had been uncovered and banned. Then Technology Review called Wikipedia "a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers," an assertion borne out by this exchange over the Scholarly Kitchen.
The unearthing in the 1990s of a cemetery for black slaves in New York City prompted curiosity about a little publicized fact of colonial American life, slavery of blacks in the North. A costly study of human remains from the cemetery yielded little useful information, David Zimmerman asserts.
Some people have declared the end of interns, but former Washingtonian editor Jack Limpert begs to differ. Limpert writes that former interns comprised a third to a half of his magazine's staff: "When you’re looking for good people, it’s one thing to look at resumes and clips and interview someone for an hour; having that someone in the office for three or four months tells you a lot more about what kind of journalist he or she might be."