About those "real people" that journalists like to include in their stories: Be careful, epidemiologist Bonnie Kerker warned science and health care writers at a New York event. “Anecdotal evidence is an oxymoron,” she said, urging her audience to use anecdotes only to illustrate the findings of a study, not the exception. Kerker and two other speakers, including NASW's Ivan Oransky, appeared Nov. 29 at a joint SWINY/AHCJ meeting at the City University of New York.
Science writing news
Curtis Brainard at CJR writes about several major bloggers leaving Discover's network just as the print magazine packs up and moves from New York to Waukesha, Wisc., with a new staff. Gone soon to National Geographic are Carl Zimmer and Ed Yong. Also leaving are Phil Plait for Slate and Sean Carroll for his own site. Writes Brainard: "The changes in Discover’s blog lineup reflect increasing competition among different outlets to capture the best science bloggers."
With the Internet's emergence comes a new issue: When to credit an earlier source of your story. At 10,000 Words, Meranda Watling offers advice and a tip on adding value: "If you can’t be first, be the most complete source or be the most original. Maybe you can connect the news of the day to some past event or some other business that will be affected by it in an unexpected way," she says. "Connect the dots for your readers. That’s what they’re coming to you for."
It doesn't matter how good your news release is, Denise Graveline writes, if reporters can't get its subject to come to the phone for a few quotes: "Even if your information is newsworthy and timely, you've done the right things to get it to the right reporter, and your heart is pure (or even if it isn't), all it takes is an expert who blows off the interview to result in no coverage." Graveline offers tips for PIOs on training experts in dealing with the news media.
You know who you are. You took typing in high school and you still put two spaces after a period, because that's how you were taught. Well, cut it out, says Slate's Farhad Manjoo: "Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It's one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left."
A much-discussed report from Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism says "the gathering and dissemination of facts, and even of basic analysis, is being automated," but that journalists can "swing more of their resources to the kind of investigative and interpretive work that only humans, not algorithms, can do." More from Nieman Lab, Poynter, Alan Mutter, and CJR.
Joanna Penn outlines her nine-step process for turning an ugly first draft into a finished product, ready for publication, and beyond. Step five is dealing with your line editor's critique: "The first time you get such a line edit, it hurts. You think you’re a writer and then someone changes practically every sentence. Ouch. But editing makes your book stronger, and the reader will thank you for it." Also from Penn, editing through community.
Organic compounds on Mars! But Curiosity's carbon find might have come from Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, NASA announces another Mars rover for 2020. The National Academy of Sciences says NASA is lost in space and it's all Obama's fault. Meanwhile, in inner space, the backlash against brain porn goes mainstream.
From time to time, all of us will find ourselves wondering whether all of the blood, sweat, and tears that we put into our work are making a difference. There are a lot of academics in the field who are very interested in these questions, and in this issue we feature three articles that we hope will expand your thinking about the ways in which science writers make a difference in their professional, local, and global communities.