As bad as it's been for the newspaper business overall, it's worse for science sections, Christopher Zara reports in the International Business Times: "In 1989, the number of newspapers with weekly science sections was 95. Today, that number is down to 19, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. That’s a big drop, even for one of the fastest declining industries in the country." NASW President Ron Winslow and CASW President Cristine Russell are among the quoted.
State of the craft
With the Internet's emergence comes a new issue: When to credit an earlier source of your story. At 10,000 Words, Meranda Watling offers advice and a tip on adding value: "If you can’t be first, be the most complete source or be the most original. Maybe you can connect the news of the day to some past event or some other business that will be affected by it in an unexpected way," she says. "Connect the dots for your readers. That’s what they’re coming to you for."
Nieman fellow David Skok teams with Harvard's influential business guru Clayton M. Christensen for an analysis of what ails the news industry and how it might be fixed, in Nieman Reports. "Four years after the 2008 financial crisis, traditional news organizations continue to see their newsrooms shrink or close. Those that survive remain mired in the innovator's dilemma: A false choice between today's revenues and tomorrow's digital promise."
From the Pew Research Center comes an update on the rising influence of social media on news consumption habits, both print and TV: "Among adults younger than age 30, as many saw news on a social networking site the previous day (33%) as saw any television news (34%), with just 13% having read a newspaper either in print or digital form." Commentary from Poynter, Higher Ed Marketing, and Nieman Lab.
Evan Ratliff talks to Nieman Journalism Lab about how his e-book platform is evolving with $1.5 million in new funding. One priority is letting readers use any device: "We really want to move to a setup where you’re buying the story from us and you’re able to read it wherever you want. So it’s really not driven by whether you have an iPhone or anything else — it’s actually driven by whether you want to read this story and then you can sort of pick your venue."
Once touted as the future of journalism, especially investigative journalism, it now has both successes and failures to report, Jodi Enda writes in American Journalism Review. For every well-funded operation like ProPublica, there is a failure like the Chicago News Cooperative, and even more hanging on forf dear life: "It is too soon to tell whether nonprofits are the key to journalism's future. If they are not, perhaps they will serve as a bridge until we get there."
Two prominent educators and NASW members offer advice to students about science writing in this Quora post. Traditional journalism may be on the skids, but other options beckon, says Rob Irion of UC Santa Cruz: "The bottom line is that I remain sanguine about getting a job with the right training in hand. Become involved with NASW, seek mentors in the field, attend key meetings (NASW and AAAS, in particular), use social media, and seek solid training. You'll do fine."
In a Nieman Reports article, Craig Silverman of Regret the Error quotes a 19th-century journalism manual that said it was "standard practice for reporters to invent a few details, provided the made-up facts were nonessential to the overall story." How things have changed. Today, Silverman writes, there's a higher standard: "Never before in the history of journalism — or society — have more people and organizations been engaged in fact checking and verification."
Famous newspapers are going broke right and left, or at least cutting back. But in this Nieman Journalism Lab post, industry analyst Ken Doctor says there are some causes for optimism. The rising popularity of tablets is one: "People like to read news on the tablet. They read more of it, from known sources, for longer periods. If the news industry were just stable, euphoria would be in order, but since it’s not, this astounding turnaround ... has been underappreciated."
When the Supreme Court's health care ruling was announced, it was almost a full day before the next morning's newspaper was published. Yet most papers played the day-old news as if it were fresh. Sam Kirkland, a copy desk intern at a Florida newspaper, offers a theory: "Here’s my hunch: We went through the motions because it’s how we’ve always done it — and because it makes us feel important ... But newspapers don’t write the first drafts of history any more."