Bloggers Carl Zimmer, Ed Yong and Hillary Rosner discuss how science blogs are evolving in a one-hour-plus video from the Cambridge Science Festival. Topics include bloggers' perceived influence on reaction to the report of arsenic-gobbling organisms in California's Mono Lake and how reporting on sexually ambiguous chickens illustrates new ways for scientists and the public to communicate via journalists. Zimmer, Rosner and moderator Cristine Russell are NASW members.
Science writing news
It's one part curiosity, one part mechanics, and one part stubborn determination, the legendary New Yorker writer tells interviewer Peter Hessler in the Paris Review. "Stories are always really, really hard," McPhee says. "I think it’s totally rational for a writer, no matter how much experience he has, to go right down in confidence to almost zero when you sit down to start something. Why not? Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you."
Dennis Meredith writes that Explaining Research and Working with Public Information Officers are making him more money through workshops and speaking engagements than from sales. Meredith, who created the Marketing and publishing resource on the ScienceWriters web site, offers advice on promotion and self-publishing in the Spring 2011 issue of ScienceWriters magazine, free to NASW members.
The death of Osama bin Laden: genomics, neuroscience, health and medicine, anthropology, media matters.
Dr. Steven J. Hatfill and the experts who first linked him to the 2001 anthrax attacks are profiled in the Atlantic and the news media takes a beating. Hatfill's lawyer describes “the two most powerful institutions in the United States, the government and the press, ganging up on an innocent man. It’s Kafka.” Says the erstwhile suspect: “The thing was, I couldn’t understand why it was happening to me. I mean, I was one of the good guys.”
That's the question journalist John Pope addresses in a post for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Prompted by questions from mental health specialists at a recent meeting of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, Pope relays some of their concerns: "Would a therapist be exerting undue influence by asking a patient to speak to a reporter?" "Would the patient feel obligated to comply as a condition of treatment?"
"It’s rather shocking to find a conference of knowledgeable and independent-minded journalists apparently uncritical of the system," freelancer John Lister writes on the Reporting on Health blog, having attended the recent Association of Health Care Journalists meeting. "U.S. health journalists appear to be less critical and analytical in approaching health reform and health policy than when they report on new drugs and treatments."
Sketchy reports of DNA testing and facial recognition from Reuters and Huffington Post, and detail from Christie Wilcox, but conspiracy theories persist. Also, was this when Twitter came of age? See the live Twitter stream of an Abbottabad man during the raid, and how the news got out via Twitter, Facebook, and television.
What's Tumblr? It's the latest social media must-have, according to this post from Jojo Malig at the Poynter Institute. More than 160 news media organizations are using the image-heavy blogging platform. So are individual journalists. But what is it good for, and how do you get started using it? This “Tumblr for journalists” slideshow from Matthew Keys has plenty of quick tips.