They've been around for almost a decade, but Cynthia Graber writes that podcasts have struggled to find a niche. Now, that may be changing, thanks to new equipment and new ways for their creators to earn revenue: "Today, podcasting is making a comeback, in part because the technology — smartphones and audio recording programs — is easy to use … Apps like Stitcher encourage seamless podcast listening, and websites like SoundCloud make embedding and sharing audio a snap."
Science writing news
Stephen King has sold 350 million books but he still fears failure, he tells Rolling Stone: "I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing – that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it." Marcy McKay writes that reading about King's fears freed her from her own self-doubt: "Most of us will never be as prolific as the author of Carrie, Stand By Me and The Green Mile … It should still give us hope. Endless."
A graduate student finds some engraved mollusk shells in a museum's collection and an analysis credits them to our evolutionary predecessor, Homo erectus. Is it a hoax? Tabitha M. Powledge thinks not: "The paper reporting this analysis has been getting a generally respectful reception along with the usual few doubts." Also, did our primate forebears share our fondness for alcohol? And a revival for Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview.org.
Maria Popova beats the rush with a top-15 list including E.O. Wilson, poet/biologist Joanna Tilsley, and illustrator Annu Kilpeläinen, whose "simple yet imaginative primer on science via art explores natural selection, continental drift, what killed the dinosaurs, how birds descended from them, and all the other processes and phenomena that took us to where we are today. Die-cut delights add an element of interactive playfulness to the classic coloring-book experience."
The retiring attorney general has prosecuted record numbers of people under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information to the media. Kelly J. O'Brien writes that Eric Holder needs to do more than express regret: "The Obama administration has undoubtedly tilted the legal landscape against leakers and national security reporters. If Holder wants to change that, he will have to unpave a long road of specific policies laid down by the DOJ during his tenure,"
As traditional news media have declined, social media and other digital outlets are beefing up their in-house content creation. Lucia Moses writes that the results have been a mixed bag. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr have already backtracked on plans to create their own content: "When platforms create homegrown content, they essentially become competitors with the very publishers they’re also trying to get to freely post content on the same platform."
At Journalist's Resource, Leighton Walter Kille and John Wihbey explain the basics of a common statistical tool and use Microsoft Excel to show the correlation between interest rates and median home prices: "The technique is well known to data journalists, but even savvy reporters may feel a measure of discomfort when they come across it — they seldom have the expertise or time needed to understand advanced mathematics or dig into a study’s original methods and data."
Some writers think they're a valuable backstop; others think they're a nuisance. Either way, fact-checkers are a fact of life when you write for major magazines, and you might as well get ready for them by getting organized, Heather Pringle writes: "I still feel a little anxious every time a fact-checker calls. But I have learned over the years that a writer can keep a fact-checker’s queries to a minimum by making the best and most detailed annotated copy possible."
From the Princeton Alumni Weekly, Joel Achenbach interviews a half-dozen of his fellow students and writes about learning from the master of non-fiction, who has influenced several generations of writers in the class he has taught for four decades: "Perhaps there are writers out there who make it look easy, but that is not the example set by McPhee. He is of the school of thought that says a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than for other people."