Science writing news

In New Orleans, a famous daily newspaper just announced it won't be daily any more. But in this Nieman Journalism Lab post, Ken Doctor sees hope, as circulation replaces advertising in the income stream: "Subscribers are learning they are paying for a news product, not a physical one delivered to their driveway," he writes. "The early evidence is that smartly executed, print subscribers can be brought along, with their paid subscriptions, into the mainly digital age."

Maryn McKenna had to break some old habits when she left her newspaper to write books: "I had to learn that, to make a book worth a reader’s time, I had to go beyond straight news reporting into interpretation and, I guess, active curation – that is, letting the reader into my POV and making my thought process visible. I still struggle with this." McKenna and five other journalist/authors talk more about those differences on The Open Notebook, funded in part by NASW.

Adam Ruben is a practicing scientist with a bone to pick over science writing in the popular press. He lets it rip on AAAS's Science Careers site: "Mainstream science articles have become formulaic. And it’s never more obvious than, say, when you read an article about a bold new advance that promises to cure something or fix something or spell certain doom — and then you realize you’re reading an article that’s 20 years old and none of those things happened."

NASW member Christie Aschwanden explains on Last Word on Nothing: "Since becoming an official LWON contributor last June, I’ve written almost 30 posts, about one every 12 days. For this work, I’ve received exactly zero dollars, zero prizes and zero resume-worthy rewards ... And I can honestly say that LWON is the best thing that’s happened in my writing life during the past year ... I can follow my follies and explore ideas that no one else cares about."

Before Buzz Bissinger wrote Friday Night Lights and became famous, he was a Nieman fellow. Two weeks ago he sat down with the current fellows on their last day and talked about what's next: "People say, 'Why’d you begin to write books?' The reason I really began to write books is that after my Nieman year I felt I owed it to myself to go and do something out of the box, and really, really do something different, not simply go back to my paper."

Casey Frechette offers 10 tips for getting good sound and using it effectively on this Poynter Institute post. They include a guide to the types of sound, what kind of equipment to use, and what to do about the ever-present problem of extraneous noise. Frechette writes: "There’s a reason radio has been called the most visual medium. There’s something about sound that puts our imaginations to work, making us more active participants in the story we’re hearing."

First do no harm, except if you're screening for prostate cancer: the prostate-specific antigen test does more harm than good, but patients and docs say "La la la, can't hear you." Teleportation sets a new distance record; next stop, an orbiting satellite. The Heartland Institute cancels future climate-change denialist conferences and makes common cause with the birthers who deny Obama's US citizenship. The solar eclipse, in full photographic glory.