Walter Hickey makes that claim for Wolfram Alpha, brainchild of Mathematica's author, and he lists his reasons on Business Insider: "It's not a search engine, it's not an encyclopedia, and it's not a calculator, but it's a little bit of all of that. It's really the only member of its field." Examples: You can calculate the odds in almost any game of chance, or find out "how long it takes to write, read or speak a certain number of words."
Science writing news
When NASW member Dan Fagin's brother-in-law, also named Dan, fell seriously ill recently, the first Dan posted updates to his social media accounts. That's when the confusion began, Fagin writes for Slate, as countless friends voiced concern for his health: "This episode drove home just how profoundly the Internet has transformed the way most of us acquire and act on information — a transformation that has forced wrenching changes in my own profession of journalism."
The editor of Creative Nonfiction Magazine discusses what writers of narrative should be trying to accomplish in an interview: "Interviewing for news is somewhat different; reporters usually know, more or less, the information they need to unearth. The writer of narrative, by contrast, is often seeking the unknown — the story behind the facts. You won’t always know the story until you hear it; your job as an interviewer, often, is to keep your subject talking."
"Scientists adore it, for getting their voices heard. And many journalists appreciate how the non-profit organization provides accurate and authoritative material on deadline," Ewen Callaway writes in a Nature profile of the Science Media Center. But critics say the center, a concept now spreading to other countries, may "foster uncritical media coverage by spoon-feeding information to reporters," Callaway writes. Commentary from Keith Kloor.
How to write a blog post in an hour. Easy-peasy if you follow these rules. And leave out the interviewing. Not to mention the thinking. On Science Blogs: Aggregating and Thinking Since 2009! The state of U.S. health: Dismal. Murder by thallium. Transcranial brain stimulation for everybody, only $249.
It's better for self-published authors to have a website than a blog, Ruth Ann Nordin argues on Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. Blogs are time-consuming to keep up, and aren't seen by most readers, she writes. They can, however, help you think through a problem: "Sometimes when we write things down, it helps to sort out the jumble of ideas in our mind. I’ve tried keeping a private journal, but it wasn’t the same as blogging before a public audience."
Computer-assisted reporting has been around since the 1980s, Northwestern's Rich Gordon writes, but today it takes two additional skills sets to produce data journalism — a news application developer and a data visualization specialist: "News organizations seeking to fill these roles are finding it difficult. Quite simply, there is more demand for people with these skills — both inside and outside of journalism — than there are people qualified to fill them."
On the 10,000 Words site, Angela Washeck lists nine online master's programs to help working journalists gain digital media skills. They include offerings from the universities of Missouri, Florida, and North Carolina, plus non-traditional offerings like Poynter's News University: "Now, there has been some debate regarding the value of a graduate journalism degree. Whatever side of that fence you’re on, I think we can all agree that learning more is never a bad thing."
The used bookstore may be a thing of the past, and so may the legal principle behind it — that once a physical work is sold, it may then be resold without violating its creator's copyright. CJR's Sarah Laskow writes about efforts to extend that practice to digital media, and what that means to both creators and consumers: "As scholars and advocates look at reforming copyright law, updating the first sale doctrine could be one of the more contentious issues."