Robert Niles thinks so. Niles writes on the Online Journalism Review site that what ails modern journalism isn't competition so much as "a stenographic model of reporting" that doesn't serve readers: "J-school cliche says 'if your mother says she loves you, check it out.' But far too often in news reporting, 'checking it out' means simply calling up another source, and presenting their confirmation or denial of mommy's alleged love in the next grafs of the story."
State of the craft
A foundation-backed effort aimed at improving environmental coverage is falling flat, Curtis Brainard writes in Columbia Journalism Review's The Observatory. At first, the Project for Improved Environmental Coverage tried to get news outlets to endorse a vision statement, but no major organizations agreed to sign on. Now, Brainard quotes project director Tyson Miller: “we’re kind of rethinking our strategy — being more advocacy focused than partnership focused.”
Is it lazy reporters or public information officers who put out misleading press releases? The Atlantic's Rebecca Greenfield took aim at PIOs in a post on recent stories linking coffee consumption to longevity, but said competing views usually win out: "Without the borderline false headlines, we don't get the contrarian debunking part, which is when we generally learn what the research really says." A contrasting view from the STATS web site.
Emily Henry throws down the gauntlet on the Online Journalism Review by listing 10 things that make online journalists better than their hidebound predecessors. For one thing, they write better: "SEO will not allow us to write vague headlines or use bad puns, and we only have the attention our [sic] audience for about three blinks, so we have to practice all of George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing at once." Henry's bio identifies her as a Patch.com editor.
In New Orleans, a famous daily newspaper just announced it won't be daily any more. But in this Nieman Journalism Lab post, Ken Doctor sees hope, as circulation replaces advertising in the income stream: "Subscribers are learning they are paying for a news product, not a physical one delivered to their driveway," he writes. "The early evidence is that smartly executed, print subscribers can be brought along, with their paid subscriptions, into the mainly digital age."
When was the last time you checked a newspaper to see what's playing at a movie theater, or to find out how your favorite sports team did? If you're like most Americans, it's probably been a while, Stijn Debrouwere writes. Instead you go to a web site that specializes in that subject: "Much of what they facilitate or do doesn’t look like journalism at all," Debrouwere says. "But you’d be naive if you thought their services aren’t often consumed instead of news."
One year after its launch, the long-form site's founder Evan Ratliff sits for a Q&A with Nieman Storyboard. So how much does he pay his writers? "We’ll pay the writer a fee – a typical fee is probably $5,000 – plus 50 percent of the royalties. The royalties come after the platform takes its percentage," Ratliff says. "Which means that if the story doesn’t do well, the authors end up getting paid maybe what they’d have gotten paid to write for Harper’s.
An upbeat report on the future of print journalism prompts a wake-up call from Nikki Usher. on the Nieman Journalism Lab: "This celebratory conviction of journalists doing God’s work to protect the community appears throughout every portrait of the 50 newspapers profiled. But there’s an underlying, unacknowledged fact: Local news, and in particular local news online, is not something people care about as much as local journalists might hope."
The founder of Narrative Science predicted in Wired magazine that one of his computer algorithms would win a Pulitzer Prize in five years. Wired's Steven Levy seems convinced that the Chicago company really can move "from commodity news to explanatory journalism and, ultimately, detailed long-form articles." Rebecca Greenfield from Atlantic isn't buying it. And PolitiFact developer Matt Waite reframes the question.
Science Writing in the Age of Denial is partly funded by an NASW Idea Grant. If you're not there, you can follow the proceedings online via tbe Twitter hashtags #sciencedenial and #denialconf, the @sciencedenial Twitter user, or the conference web site, where you can review the schedule and speaker biographies.