Victoria Costello at the PLOS network lists "Ten Essential Qualities of Science Bloggers," with examples. On respecting readers: "The best science bloggers demonstrate respect for readers by not opting for over-simplifications, and by doing their utmost to simply communicate complexity. They acknowledge the essence of science is an open ongoing exchange. Said another way, they show us that (in science, at least) there’s rarely (if ever) a 'last word' on anything."
Science writing news
Next year brings a remake of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and CJR has a wide-ranging interview with its host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Among his topics is Tyson's philosophy on Twitter: "The 140 characters are giving you access to how my brain is wired in any day of my life, how I see things. Like my tweet when Mitt Romney suggested that we cut PBS’s budget to reduce the deficit. I said that’s like deleting text files to make space on your 500-gigabyte hard drive."
It could be the brightest comet of our lifetimes, and no, it's not Kohoutek. It's ISON and it tops the list of Smithsonian's 5 Science Stories to Watch in 2013: "Astronomers are predicting that when it passes by us and closely orbits the sun in November and December of 2013, it could be the astronomical sight of our lifetime." We'll see. Also on the list: Drilling into Lake Vostok; algae fuel; Big Bang data; and supercomputers in medicine.
Independent bookstores still survive in this era of Amazon and e-books, and Stephanie Chandler offers some tips for authors who want to get their titles displayed there. She discusses how to make initial contact, what discounts booksellers typically expect, how to do cross-promotion with local media appearances, and how to arrange for bookstores to take your books on consignment. The page also contains a link to a model "Bookstore consignment agreement" in Word format.
One-third of Americans now own either an e-book reader or a tablet computer, according to the latest update from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. That's almost double the rate from one year earlier, and it corresponds to a decline — from 72% to 67% — in the percentage reading print books. E-book readers are typically 30 to 49 years old, have college or graduate degrees, and live in households earning more than $75,000, the report said.
Jane Friedman offers 10 suggestions for making sure your website attracts eyeballs. An example: When cross-posting from your site to social media, give each of your posts a personal touch, tailored to that audience. "Be sure to link to new blog posts on each social media network where you’re active. But don’t just post a link. Offer an intriguing question, lead in, excerpt, or explanation of why the post might be interesting to people on that specific social network."
Nick Diakopoulos at Nieman Journalism Lab has some words of warning about the computer tools that sites like Google use on news pages: "Even robots have biases. Any decision process, whether human or algorithm, about what to include, exclude, or emphasize — processes of which Google News has many — has the potential to introduce bias." He also defines algorithm types: Summarization, personalization, optimization, ranking, association, classification, and aggregation.
If you don't feel up to slogging through a dozen or more lists of the top science stories of 2012, keep an eye on the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, where Charlie Petit is collecting lists and commenting on them. The Higgs boson and the Curiosity landing get lots of ink, but you won't want to miss Oops! 5 Retracted Science Studies of 2012 and The 10 Most Blushworthy Science Stories of 2012, both from LiveScience.
PIOs and their colleagues might have noticed a push NIH recently made to reinforce the requirement that grantee institutions provide acknowledgement of federal funding in press releases, stories, and other publicly facing items. Some of you may also have heard from NIH lately about including grant numbers in press releases and similar materials, too. Here’s what these projects are all about.