Jim Romenesko posed that question after a retired editor blogged about staffers who are disengaged from their product. Responses include an Oscar Madison quote — “I don’t have to read the paper. I write the paper.” — and this from another retired editor: “I was always surprised how many of our reporters ... but relied only on the free Internet access. Can’t say I blame them. They are approaching their fifth year without a raise.”
Miscellaneous
Here are two of what will undoubtedly be many more lists of the year's best long-form science writing. The first is from Ed Yong, who endorses the idea that "the internet is triggering a renaissance for long-form writing." The second is from the longform.org site, which has collected suggestions in 11 different subject areas, including science. Also, from the Poynter Institute, why it's hard to write both long and short.
Journalists thrive on deadlines but speakers need to prepare, Dallas Morning News editor Tom Huang writes in a Poynter post. Huang's top 10 tips for journalists doing presentations include "Understand that part of teaching is showmanship," and "Get your audience to interact with you." But above all, prepare: "You’re good at what you do. But that doesn’t mean you’ve broken down what you do into steps and thought about the most effective way to teach those steps."
When you reach for a second helping of Lindsay Lohan instead of reading the latest neutrino news, should your computer nudge you back to good habits? That's the promise — or threat — of an MIT Media Lab project discussed in this Nieman Journalism Lab post. Imagine "a Firefox plugin that would passively watch your websurfing behavior and characterize your personal information consumption," researcher Ethan Zuckerman says. Yikes. Followup post.
What do Edward Abbey, George Orwell, and Truman Capote have in common? They all appear on this "reading list for future journalists" from Columbia Journalism Review. "We asked some of our favorite journalists, scholars, and critics to recommend books and other works that could help the next generation of reporters become better observers, storytellers, and thinkers," the site says. Don't miss the link to the full list for more recommendations.
Google may want to reinvent the news business, but don't bother asking to be in Google News if you're a solo practitioner. That's what Dan Frommer discovered when he asked to have his Splatf site included. "Google has a rule about the sites that it includes in Google News," Frommer wrote. "They can’t be one-person operations, and they have to appear to be 'organizations.' Never mind solo shops practicing entrepreneurial journalism — Google wants news with overhead!"
The public affairs office at Rockefeller University had a delicate job on Oct. 3 when it had to make two announcements — that one of its scientists had just won the Nobel Prize, and that he had died three days earlier. In this post on the Don't Get Caught blog, Denise Graveline talks to Rockefeller's Joe Bonner about preparations for the Nobels, and the morning of the announcement, when the university learned about the award and the death in that order.
It seems journalism isn't the only line of work in crisis. In this blog post, Morgan Giddings mourns for the days when institutions like Bell Labs could hire scientists and just turn them loose to develop new knowledge. Now, scientists are pressured to produce marketable results quickly: "People ask me all the time why I gave up a tenured faculty job at a major research university, as if I were insane. Given what is going on in science, am I really all that insane?"
Stories about in vitro fertilization, biodiversity, the effects of global warming in the Arctic and in Colorado, and the worldwide effects of a flu pandemic are the subjects of this year's winners of the Science in Society award, which is conferred by the National Association of Science Writers (NASW).
Screenwriting guru Robert McKee termed it “the inciting incident” that turns a character's world upside down, Roy Peter Clark notes at the Poynter Institute. On this 9/11 anniversary, Nieman Storyboard praises a story from the Boston Globe about some troubled survivors — a flight attendant who called in sick; the ticket agent who helped two Middle Eastern men board; the ramp workers who inspected two suspicious bags.