The once-popular blog aggregator is handing over control to National Geographic, less than a year after several prominent bloggers moved out in reaction to the site's questionable deal with Pepsi. Read much of the backstory at CJR's The Observatory, plus reaction and other comment from Paul Raeburn, John Travis, and Hank Campbell.
Science blogs
The doomed cosmonaut hurtled toward earth in a crippled spacecraft, cursing the engineers who put him there. That gripping story from 1967 was the subject of a recent book and a National Public Radio blog entry. But how much of it was true? Natalie Wolchover reviews the evidence on Life's Little Mysteries, raising questions about whether there are different standards of proof for conventional news stories and blog entries.
Ivan Oransky at Embargo Watch has the story of a science-oriented web site, io9.com, that suddenly found itself suspended from embargoed releases on the American Association for the Advancement of Science site, EurekAlert — and how it was finally resolved.
From Ed Yong at the Not Exactly Rocket Science blog comes a list of more than three dozen links ranging from explainers and news coverage to political commentary.
Watch a video of five prominent science blogger/journalists speaking on a panel organized by New England Science Writers in January at Harvard University.
Several blogs today are talking about a familiar subject: Science journalists who rely too much on press releases to guide their reporting. Ivan Oransky's Embargo Watch looks at a curious pair of studies two weeks apart in the same journal, one with a press release and one without. Guess which got covered? Gary Schwitzer comments further.