Compound Interest, a blog by a British graduate chemist and teacher, has a poster with everything you need to know about evaluating stories on scientific research. "The vast majority of people will get their science news from online news site articles, and rarely delve into the research that the article is based on," its anonymous author writes. Red flags listed in the poster include "sensational headlines," "misinterpreted results," and "speculative language."
State of the craft
There's one-third less revenue coming into American journalism than there was eight years ago, according to the latest report from the Pew Research Center: "While audience revenue is becoming more critical to the business, it cannot fully compensate for the loss of ad dollars. That is why most conversations about news sustainability come back to 'all of the above' — cultivating a variety of revenue streams … and experimenting with new ways of paying for journalism."
Hard-news reporters may be turning up their noses at the very type of stories that readers want, or at least share in social media, Denise Graveline writes in a post aimed at media relations people: "Having come out of the world of magazine journalism, where the 'evergreen' topic has long been considered catnip for readers, I can only guess that these journalists dismissed this undercurrent because the genre of 'what the people want' had no appeal to them as writers."
Lauren Kirchner writes in CJR about the latest developments in courtrooms across the nation, where bloggers are trying to gain the same protection from defamation actions as other news reporters. Plaintiffs and their lawyers are fighting back, and judges are divided: "Since New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964, media outlets have had a strong protection against defamation suits. But, in the parlance of our times, who is the media?"
Minda Zetlin, president of the American Society of Journalists & Authors, writes that freelancers should think twice before criticizing their peers who work for below-market rates: "When I hear a writer proudly declare that he or she never accepts less than X — and neither should anyone else — all I can think is how cruel that is, and how wrong. How dare we criticize a colleague who may be trying to feed a child, or make a mortgage payment, or pay for health care?"
Whether journalism peaked in the era of the muckrakers or when covering the Civil Rights movement, ProPublica's Paul Steiger says a new golden age will require teamwork: "Creating millions of lone-wolf, single-person bloggers doesn't get us to a golden age … If you're going to reliably produce journalism that improves the world, maybe you don't need a village, but you need some collaborators. You need lots of reporters. You need editors, data journalists, a lawyer."
Each summer, the American Association for the Advancement of Science places science, engineering, and math students in media jobs. One recent fellow, Anna Haensch, writes about the differences between science and journalism: "What I thought would be a summer spent in leisurely scientific inquiry turned out to be spent in inquiry of a more metaphysical nature. This was indeed an enriching pursuit, but not in the way that I had initially thought."
Angela Washeck skips the resolutions and goes straight to a list of what she hopes to see in journalism this year: "Hoping that the longform renaissance continues. Whether it means paying $1.99 for one well-reported story, membership drives, monthly subscriptions or purchasing short e-books, let’s keep this going in 2014." Heavy on the digital, her list also includes better methods for dealing with comments and a resurgence in professional (not iPhone) photos.
The Huffington Post's Emily Swanson has bad news on public trust in scientists and science writers, but Faye Flam says that survey missed the middle ground: "There's no reason people should have blanket trust in journalists," Flam writes. "They should expect us to be clear and complete so they can follow the logic and evidence behind any given claim we're presenting. But the poll doesn't appear to offer anything along these lines as an answer."
A long list of left-leaning media outlets pay interns little or nothing, Charles Davis writes, and names some: "The problem with unpaid internships is that interns are people, and in capitalist economies people generally must work for money in order to obtain food and shelter. While I managed to pull it off, a lot of those who want to become journalists aren’t lucky enough to be born white and middle class." Also, Davis talks about his story.