The answer might come from the states, Joanne Kenen writes for the Association of Health Care Journalists. The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule before the end of the month and the health care law's individual mandate, among other provisions, is on the line. Kenen says states are getting ready: "If your state officials say they don’t have any backup plans, ask again ... If they won’t tell you before the Supreme Court ruling, ask again right after. And keep asking."
Science writing news
When tax time rolls around, most filers receive refunds. Just because you receive one for tax year 2011, doesn’t mean your return passed muster and you can forget about an audit. All it means is that IRS computers checked arithmetic and other basic items. From the Spring 2012 ScienceWriters.
Two views on a favorite meme of the Internet age. Robert Niles writes on Online Journalism Review that news publishers are struggling "because the market's telling them just how worthless" their product — a commodity called information — actually is. But on Scholarly Kitchen, Kent Anderson writes that data is never free: "Unless we fully realize the costs and obligations of being digital, we’re likely to mistakenly believe it can be free."
A guy at Gawker apparently has it down to a science, literally, Andrew Phelps writes on the Nieman Journalism Lab site. Phelps quotes Neetzan Zimmerman on the elements of a viral post, starting with the element of surprise: "A taxidermied cat being that’s been turned into a helicopter — that’s clearly going to be successful, right? Because it’s got that element of shock, it’s got that element of a cat, you know, it’s basically just tailored to the Internet."
Covering science and innovation policy with "creative nonfiction" methods will be the focus of two four-day workshops funded by the National Science Foundation and organized by Arizona State University, Curtis Brainard reports in Columbia Journalism Review. Co-director Lee Gutkind, who spoke at the fall 2005 NASW meeting in Pittsburgh, says the goal is to attract "emerging communicators" who will publish literary-style articles or essays on science in major outlets.
Dan Kois writes on Nieman Storyboard about an Adam Sternbergh story and its seductive headline "You Walk Wrong." Kois writes: "This piece wasn’t reported from a war zone. It doesn’t unearth any great scandal or free an innocent man from prison or unveil the side of a star we’ve never seen before ... While I love stories that do all those things, I also love a story that just makes me think about something simple in an entirely different way."
Here's the test: Can you fail? If you're "publishing" on a social media or blog site, you can't fail financially, so you're not a publisher, Kent Anderson writes on the Scholarly Kitchen: "When we tweet, blog, or update, we are not publishers. We are authors. Twitter, WordPress, or Facebook are the publishers. They just accept nearly everything we submit, so it feels like we’re publishers. But each company has sheltered us as authors from the risks of their ventures."
Debunking the Zombie Apocalypse. No, parasites are not turning people into zombie cannibals. Dazzling Transit of Venus photos. In the RNA World, iron may have made RNA on steroids. Devising an elevator speech on scientific ignorance. Sexual division of labor — aka sexism — in neuroscience.
A foundation-backed effort aimed at improving environmental coverage is falling flat, Curtis Brainard writes in Columbia Journalism Review's The Observatory. At first, the Project for Improved Environmental Coverage tried to get news outlets to endorse a vision statement, but no major organizations agreed to sign on. Now, Brainard quotes project director Tyson Miller: “we’re kind of rethinking our strategy — being more advocacy focused than partnership focused.”