Speedy neutrinos, the elusive Higgs boson, old spaceships, new planets — these were among the biggest science stories of 2011, but John Timmer on Ars Technica explains why they bear watching in 2012 as well. "For a science writer, these are the gifts that are just going to keep giving.," Timmer writes. Also: Discover, Nature, and Scientific American offer their own lists of 2011 science stories.
Science writing news
Amy Ellis Nutt first wrote about Jon Sarkin in 2003. A successful but shy chiropractor, Sarkin had suffered a mysterious brain malady, undergone surgery, then had a stroke, only to emerge from a coma as an energetic, boisterous artist. It took five years for Nutt's brief Newsday feature to evolve into a book. She tells the story in the winter Nieman Reports issue, "Writing the Book." Watch this space for more from the issue in coming days.
"I want to spend less time on social media but post more frequently." That's the challenge put to Denise Graveline by a recent questioner. Graveline offers some tips for achieving that state on her "don't get caught' blog. "Before I turn the page on 2011," she writes, "I've started my now-annual "cleanup" of my social media habits, especially my reading list — the source of my content stash for blog posts — and how I handle incoming tweets, messages and emails."
David Crotty comments at the Scholarly Kitchen about a new journal's decision to put scientists, instead of editors, in charge of its publication. "Is there a factual basis, a measurable qualitative difference seen in the performance of the two types of editors?" Crotty asks. "Are professional editors inferior? Or are they being used as a scapegoat for rejected authors, the scholarly equivalent of blaming the referee when one’s local sports team loses a match?"
Here are two of what will undoubtedly be many more lists of the year's best long-form science writing. The first is from Ed Yong, who endorses the idea that "the internet is triggering a renaissance for long-form writing." The second is from the longform.org site, which has collected suggestions in 11 different subject areas, including science. Also, from the Poynter Institute, why it's hard to write both long and short.
How can you tell if you're a "real" journalist? You know, the kind who looks like Murrow, or at least Bogie. Hint: It's got nothing to do with where you went to college, or even where you work. The Stuff Journalists Like blog has a list right here. Who do you call when you have to make bail? Where are you most likely to eat a meal? Plus more suggestions in the comments, from the virtues of pica poles to grammatical errors in popular music.
Journalism's mistakes, both serious and comical, have long been the focus of Craig Silverman's Recent the Error web site, which recently moved to the Romenesko-less Poynter Institute site. The Year in Media Errors and Corrections is his first big effort at his new home. It includes multiple Obama/Osama mixups, a rundown of year's plagiarists, and Salon's retraction of a 2005 article linking autism and vaccines, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Read them and weep.
Carl Zimmer talks about his influences (among other subjects) in a two-part series on Scientific American's Primate Diaries blog and Moby Dick tops his list. "Melville’s novel is probably a quarter to a third science writing," Zimmer says. "It’s the story of an obsessed captain going after a whale interspersed with long passages about marine biology, paleontology, even consciousness. It’s all science. But he writes about it in a style that can be quite humbling."
Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells multiple stories and jumps around in time. On the Open Notebook site, Skloot tells David Dobbs how she made it work. "As soon as I realized I had to structure the book in a disjointed way, I went to a local bookseller, explained the story to her and said, Find me any novel you can find that takes place in multiple time periods, with multiple characters and voices, and jumps around a lot. So she did."