Science writing news

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has pledged not to punish journalists who name physicians appearing in the National Practitioner Data Bank's public data file, the Association of Health Care Journalists reports. ACHJ, NASW, and four other journalism groups protested last year when the department temporarily cut off access to the public file after a physician's attorney complained about a reporter's use of the data in a story.

Hillary Rosner bemoans the fact that all of this year's American Society of Magazine Editors awards finalists were men. In this pair of blog posts she says that magazines aimed at women avoid long narratives: "Guess what, women’s mags: I’m a woman, and I have a really busy life, and I read magazine stories longer than 1000 words. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. Does anyone else find this attitude incredibly offensive toward women?"

The biographer of Robert Moses is about to publish his fourth volume on Lyndon Johnson and he's running late, Chris Jones writes in an exquisitely detailed Esquire profile: "Caro knits together his fingers until he knows what his book is about. Once he is certain, he will write one or two paragraphs — he aims for one, but he usually writes two, a consistent Caro math — that capture his ambitions." Also, CJR's 2002 Caro profile revisited.

A recent Pew study on the habits of local news consumers had both good and bad things to say about the future of local journalism. Almost three-quarters of adults say they are avid followers of local news and rely mainly on their local newspapers, the study reported. But Steve Myers at the Poynter Institute finds a darker message: "Glass half empty: 72 percent of local news junkies say they wouldn’t pay for online access to their newspaper."

Two freedom-of-information advocates discuss the Obama Administration's record in the Columbia Journalism Review and sound disappointed. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Executive Director Lucy Dalglish: “The Obama administration at least says the right things. But there’s somewhat of a disconnect between what we consider to be 'transparency' and what they think that means.” Also: Jennifer Lynch, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Print still dominates but e-books grew from 17% of sales in December to 21% just two months later in February, according to this new study from the Pew Research Center. Authors will be pleased to learn that e-book device users read more: "Those who read e-books read more books than those who don't have the devices: The average reader of e-books has read 24 books (the mean number) in the past 12 months, compared with an average of 15 books by a non-e-book consumer."

Anything on the popular Last Word on Nothing site, according to a post by Heather Pringle: "Currently, the Last Word on Nothing.com is persona non grata in China, blocked from its millions of computers. The country’s Great Firewall — the massive internet censorship operation masterminded by the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing — has risen up against us and struck our website down." She also explains how to tell if your site is blocked.