Probably not as well as these collected by Columbia University's Sree Sreenivasan. Sreenivasan's tips, posted here, stress the basics: Your full name, employer or major freelance clients, email address, phone number. Those on his "best" list add more: "Editor-in-chief of the world's best food site," "I love NYC, tech & funk," and "A tech, news, rollerblading, nature, urban, art, Apple, apples, web and coffee-obsessed multimedia journalist."
Science writing news
According to Matt Thompson at the Poynter Institute, there are four basic types of journalists: The Storyteller, the Newshound, the Systems Analyst and the Provocateur. "Provocateurs surface distinctive ideas and angles, disrupting the natural tendency of media types to exhibit herd behavior," Thompson writes. But there's a downside: "The desire for a fresh take can push a journalist into being pointlessly contrarian or spotting trends that don’t exist."
From Arizona State's Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism comes this two-page PDF with step-by-step tips for bullet-proofing your copy. Craig Silverman of Poynter's Regret the Error blog writes: "One thing I like about the checklist is that it advises journalists to print out their articles when checking them. Taking stories from the screen to the printed page is a great way to ensure you examine them with fresh eyes."
Tim Carmody breaks down a Gladwell essay on two classic condiments. Among its other virtues, “The Ketchup Conundrum” took the word "umami" mainstream, Carmody writes: "I can’t stand ketchup. Any ketchup ... But I am riveted by the story of ketchup regardless, because Gladwell’s offered me a route, through history, science, and the words of men and women here and now, to understand these odd human beings around me who love the stuff."
Meredith Cochie put a quite a show at a recent SPJ conference with her advice for students, Dan Reimold writes on College Media Matters. For example, take the "overzealous student who politely and repeatedly accosted her with business cards and clips and questions about job prospects ... Some of his early approaches were a bit abrupt and artless, but his overall persistence and speak-to-strangers-in-positions-of-power courage enabled him to earn a name for himself."
Brain mapping and debating a Connectome Project: the Brainbrawl displays science at its classiest. The Jennifer Anniston Neuron. Those mutant H5N1 flu virus papers will be published revised but not redacted. The FDA will not ban BPA, at least for now. Reading list for evolutionary economics. The Carnival of Evolution: computational trees, evolutionary trees, why humans are not apes, primate cooperation, humans and vultures as scavengers, what that new fossil foot tells us about mothering.
Freelancers take note: "Have you checked your local zoning code to see what it says about running a business out of your home? You might surprised by what you learn," Robert Niles writes in an Online Journalism Review post. "Even if all you do in running your business is to type on your home computer, the fact that you're earning income that's not coming from an employer is enough in some jurisdictions to cover you under local home-business zoning and tax rules."
They beat our best at Jeopardy. Now they've set their sights on journalism, Joseph Stromberg writes on Smithsonian.com. "Software is being developed that can use raw data — such as Twitter feeds, company earnings reports and baseball box scores — to automatically produce news articles that seem as though they were written by a real live human," Stromberg says. If it works, software could "outcompete traditional journalism, since the cost is so much lower."
Mostly it's that there isn't much of it, Stefanie Friedhoff writes in the Spring Nieman Reports: "Between 2001 and 2011, foreign health aid to developing nations quadrupled from $7.6 billion to over $28 billion. During the same period, 18 newspapers and two newspaper chains in the United States closed all their foreign bureaus." Other problems: Lack of training, scarce "breaking news," and the sheer complexity of many global health issues.