The Associated Press caused a stir recently when it issued a ponderous policy guide for its staff to use when "retweeting" — i.e., forwarding tweets from other users. It had seven pages of rules designed to make sure AP reporters are not stained by too much opinion. "AP has decided it wants to control the impossible — what readers think about what it's sharing," Denise Graveline comments in response. More from Poynter.
Science writing news
That's the provocative point of this recent Scholarly Kitchen post. Discussing the Hathi Trust orphan works lawsuit, Rick Anderson notes that copyright law doesn't give authors complete control of their work, common belief notwithstanding. On the contrary, he writes: "Within legal limits, it’s not up to you how people use your work." Also: "It’s the law, not the copyright holder, that determines what uses can be made of a copyrighted work."
When you reach for a second helping of Lindsay Lohan instead of reading the latest neutrino news, should your computer nudge you back to good habits? That's the promise — or threat — of an MIT Media Lab project discussed in this Nieman Journalism Lab post. Imagine "a Firefox plugin that would passively watch your websurfing behavior and characterize your personal information consumption," researcher Ethan Zuckerman says. Yikes. Followup post.
Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview.org usually points out where journalists fail in medical coverage.
By all accounts, WCSJ2011 was an impressive feat, marking the first iteration of the conference hosted by an Arab nation. But behind the scenes, political problems caused extensive debate and several disruptions. The inclusion of U.S.-Israeli journalist Anna Wexler on a panel caused divisions within the Arab Science Journalists Association (ASJA), a co-sponsor of the conference. From the Fall 2011 ScienceWriters.
Self-promotion — not community engagement — seems to guide tweets from 13 news organizations studied in a new report from the Pew Research Center. "The news content posted, moreover, matches closely the news events given priority on the news organizations' legacy platforms," the report said. Comments from Poynter here and here, plus 10,000 Words, and Nieman Journalism Lab.
For Nieman Storyboard, Dan Vergano dissects Lawrence Weschler's 1994 article in Harper's about an offbeat Los Angeles museum, and is awed by the writer's sleight of hand to shift from third person, to second person, to first person, to internal narrative. "The real lesson Weschler offers is not so much in showing the possibilities raised by moving the camera view around on the reader, as in the directness with which he performs his tricks."
It consists of six blogs from places like the New York Times and ProPublica, and the [10,000 Words] site has the full list in two parts. The second part also includes details about a data journalism handbook now being group-written by some of the discipline's brightest lights: "The goal is to have a comprehensive draft completed by the end of the year, said Liliana Bounegru of the European Journalism Centre."
Neutrinos continue to be faster than light. Perhaps. A flood of stem-cell blogging: At the American Heart Association meeting, one small trial yields positive results, another doesn't, and the media fumble coverage. Stem-cell pioneer Geron shuts down its tiny clinical trial and flees the field. Some bloggers mourn, while others jump for joy.