A new study in PLOS Medicine finds that journal abstracts are often a source of overly positive "spin" in the popular media: "Spin was identified in about half of press releases and media coverage. In multivariable analysis, the main factor associated with spin in press releases was the presence of spin in the article abstract conclusion." More from Christie Wilcox, Gary Schwitzer, and Kent Anderson.
Science writing news
Evan Ratliff talks to Nieman Journalism Lab about how his e-book platform is evolving with $1.5 million in new funding. One priority is letting readers use any device: "We really want to move to a setup where you’re buying the story from us and you’re able to read it wherever you want. So it’s really not driven by whether you have an iPhone or anything else — it’s actually driven by whether you want to read this story and then you can sort of pick your venue."
The days when a beginning journalist was surrounded by a newsroom full of experienced colleagues may be gone now, Jillian Keenan writes on the Poynter site: "I fell in love with the freedom and flexibility of independent journalism, but there was one problem: without long-term editors to supervise my work, it seemed like I’d never find those inspiring mentors I had imagined." Keenan offers five tips for freelancers who want to fill the gap by finding their own mentors.
New York City's Health Department is requiring parental consent for a specific form of Jewish ritual circumcision amid claims that it interferes with religious freedom. The pediatricians' official claim that circumcision is good for you and prevents disease appears to be preaching to the converted. How are bloggers at Discover paid? An encore for the ENCORE dispute. What does it mean to say 80% of the human genome is functional?
With 670 participants and more than 450 speakers, panelists, and various performers using different presentation formats, the International Conference of Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) took place in Florence, Italy, in April, and was hailed as a success. The 12th of a series, this year’s conference was dedicated to “quality, honesty, and beauty in science and technology communication.” From the Summer 2012 ScienceWriters.
Once touted as the future of journalism, especially investigative journalism, it now has both successes and failures to report, Jodi Enda writes in American Journalism Review. For every well-funded operation like ProPublica, there is a failure like the Chicago News Cooperative, and even more hanging on forf dear life: "It is too soon to tell whether nonprofits are the key to journalism's future. If they are not, perhaps they will serve as a bridge until we get there."
Jon Cohen, a contributing correspondent for Science magazine, has been named winner of the 2012 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. The award is made in recognition of his exemplary coverage of a broad range of biomedical topics, but most notably his distinguished and persistent chronicling of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.
John Timmer writes at Ars Technica that press reports of last week's ENCODE research update "painted an entirely fictitious history of biology's past, along with a misleading picture of its present. As a result, the public that relied on those press reports now has a completely mistaken view of our current state of knowledge." Timmer speads blame far and wide, assigning shares to reporters, press officers, journals, and even some of the project's scientists.
Interviewed in Guernica, the Pulitzer-winning MacArthur fellow says asking questions isn't the best way to report on people: "With questions, you ask them, and sometimes the person’s wondering, 'What is the right answer? What does she want? What does she think? Let me give her what she’s looking for.' Listening and observing often work much better [and] reveal much more about the complexity of someone than the answers that they give to questions about themselves."