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| Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 1999 |
By Tabitha M. Powledge
NASW's multimedia guru is Jane Stevens, famous for her annual update on science writing opportunities in the New Media during NASW's science writing workshops. (Full disclosure: Jane is also a friend.) Naturally the 1998 session in Philadelphia, was, therefore, well-organized and comprehensive. But above all, the Philadelphia session was candid. So much so that I came away persuaded that there were no science-writing opportunities in the New Media.
At that session, the speaker from the wide-ranging, lively and often useful CyberTimes site mounted by the New York Times explained how it was being transmogrified (read: downsized, downgraded, and altogether diminished) for economic reasons. Other panelists raved about their up-to-the-minute technology, their headache-inducing design, and the number of visitors they got. But the New-Media czars also bragged about how they kept text to a minimum-captions and blurbs, one screen at most. It's a given that they don't know from copy editors. But they made it clear that writers were not an important part of the team either. They wanted producers, and they said so.
The 1999 session in Anaheim was more upbeat. The most ambitious site on display, and the one of greatest potential interest to us, was the Discovery Channel Online <www.discovery.com>. According to Andrea Meditch, its editorial director, all the site's writers are freelances, and all its content is original.
The site has changed since its beginnings way back in, oh, 1997 or thereabouts. Then DCO was supposed to be a stand-alone Webzine completely independent of its parent Discovery Channel. Now tie-ins with and expansions of the TV material are explicit and numerous. That doesn't have to be bad, and on a swift recent cruise of the site I saw nothing particularly objectionable about the tie-ins-as long as the cruisee understands up front that a chief purpose of the Web site is to promote Discovery's TV offerings.
Another group of DCO changes is unambiguously for the better. The site is significantly less confusing and easier to negotiate. The ads tend to jump up and down, but not much else does. Tech toys like audio and video bedeck some pieces, but they are optional. And there's plenty of evidence that, as Meditch claimed, at least some of the site's visitors actually do read. Lots of items are text articles, plain and simple. Most are indeed short, but not a few are no shorter than the treatment the same story would get in respectable newspapers.
Still, the editors are not looking for linear stories, Meditch stressed. The question is which part of the story is best told on the Web. Among the available niches: daily news briefs, Earth Alert ("disasters du jour") Disease Alert, features (including little features of 600-700 words), and expeditions.
Expeditions-the slice-of-research-life pieces that Jane's hair-raising Antarctica trips pioneered-are particularly suited to Web sites, but they are not your average freelance pieces. Discovery.com calls them daily adventures, and that's apt. One essential is a great built-in narrative, ideally in a remote place. Another, usually, is specialized video cameras and other glitzy (i.e., costly) equipment. You must also be in good enough shape to lug it, and sunny enough of disposition to put up with inconvenience, discomfort, and occasional danger. The point is to provide vicarious thrills to your palpitating online readers-and to have a fresh thrill waiting when they check back with you the following day.
A proposal for the Discovery Channel Online should list the elements of the story and describe how it might unfold. Meditch cautioned that writing for them isn't for everybody. There is much to learn about how a piece comes together on a Web site. The experience is very much a partnership, she emphasized. I take this to mean that, in general, writers are still viewed there as lesser creatures than producers. But at least they use writers. Contact for science proposals is Discovery Channel Online's senior science producer, Karen Watson, Karen_Watson@discovery.com.
Discovery Channel Online appears to do almost nothing medical. By contrast, MSNBC's Web site <www.msnbc.com> does almost nothing but. Charlene Laino, MSNBC.com's Health Editor/Producer has become a regular at the NASW workshops. She says the site works closely with NBC producers to develop extra material to accompany their scripts, but it uses originals, too. Freelances don't have to provide video, although audio is often useful; stories can be illustrated with videos made from still photos accompanied by audio. The site also is partial to infoboxes in the USA Today mode. Contact: charlene.laino@msnbc.com.
Science (as opposed to health) is considered part of general news at MSNBC.com. It is handled by Alan Boyle, who cautions that his department has little money for freelance pieces. Contact: alan.boyle@msnbc.com. Technology piece ideas should go to mark.stevenson@msnbc.com.
Ken Chang, science writer at abcnews.com <abcnews.go.com>, came up with the day's most provocative definitions in describing the site's three topic areas of potential interest to science writers: health ("what can kill you"), technology ("what can kill someone else"), and science ("everything else that has no practical value"). Content is not based on or tied in with the network's news. Alas, while the site does use freelances occasionally, the budget is limited. Troll the site and you'll see what he means. It's heavy on wire service copy and also uses staff-written material. Contact: Kenneth.Chang@infoseek.com.
You don't need to be reminded, of course, that before tackling a Web site proposal, you should look carefully at sites to get a feel for what they want. What these Web sites seem to have in common (except, usually, low freelance budgets), is a bottomless appetite for that buzzword of the '90s, interactivity. What counts as interactivity for them can be-often is-something as simple as Q&A. The Qs come from the site's visitors and the As are provided by experts. This need not even be done in real time. As Jane pointed out, the dialogue can be carried on via e-mail and then posted. But ideas for interaction of some kind are close to essential for a proposal to one of these sites.
If you have been dwelling in the Outer Darkness with the other 'Net wanderers who are ignorant of Google, the best search engine yet, are you in for a treat. Whooooeeee, is Google good! How good? So good that my first hit is exactly right about nine times out of 10. So good that even in that tenth case I never have to look further than the first page. And wait, there's more.
A separate Google search engine dedicated exclusively to government sites, which makes it short work to find that irksome agency whose exact acronym you can never quite recall.
Cached snapshots of each site at the moment Google's 'bot checked it out-instant remedy for the dreaded Error 404 Not Found.
Links to several other search engines. This, of course, is Googlegeeks' idea of postmodern irony. The point being that with Google you don't need other search engines.
How does Google do it? There's a woolly explanation on the site, but basically it's magic.
The last of Jane's speakers in Anaheim was Sean Henahan of Access Excellence. He ends up down here rather than up there because the site buys no freelance material. (Original content comes all from Sean, whose energy is admirable; he produces several thousand words per week.) But the site is worth your attention as a research source.
Access Excellence, aimed chiefly at biology teachers, is the brainchild of the biotech company Genentech. Thus you will not be bowled over to learn that the site links to information about the company, and has a largely positive slant on the biotech industry. But the self-interest on display does not approach indecency; indeed, a lot of this material simply explains technical processes or provides reasonable responses to the industry's many critics. And most of the site is quite free from the sound of grinding axes. There are science news briefs and not-so-briefs, interviews, activity suggestions, teaching how-tos and discussions of education reform. And, of course, the obligatory interactivity, in this case with teachers. Not a deep or comprehensive site, but one that repays browsing.
In the first appearance of the Free Lance more than two years ago, I described the Web sites of two important newspapers: The New York Times and the Washington Post. Both sites have changed significantly since then, so here's an update:
www.washingtonpost.com, which I trashed thoroughly, has turned into a veritable silk purse. Pieces by the Post's second-to-none science and medical writers were formerly next to impossible to find. Now just click on Health in the left-hand column of the opening page and up come health-related pieces from the past several days, including the Tuesday Health tabloid. Recently the online Health section was beefed up with Web-only additions like general medical and drug information and useful links that complement the main features.
The science page, usually a feature and some briefs, still appears every Monday in the main news section. The monthly Horizon's target audience is kids, and it no longer traffics exclusively in science, but the emphasis is on basic explanations, so it's valuable for browsing-and filing.
Three other sections are also worth perusal:
And I haven't even mentioned the site's strongest feature: its search engine, a whiz at finding past articles, very fast, very accurate. These are free if published in the preceding 14 days and inexpensive if not. The site is also free, and doesn't even require registration.
www.nytimes.com has actually declined a bit in content quality owing to a miasma of fluffification that has settled over the entire paper. Science, regrettably, has been particularly fluffed. But let's look on the bright side. The Newspaper of Record is still free, which I wouldn't have wagered two years ago. In fact it's more free, because it has quietly stopped charging for access from outside the US. Some days I can almost believe that information really does want to be free. Except that in this case, registration is required.
The former Wednesday Health section has been folded into the Tuesday Science section, and the whole beefed up with beefcake-fitness tips, fitness equipment, fitness esprit de corps. Health foods and alternative medicine are permitted the occasional appearance. And, Heaven help us, self-help. All of which leaves Real Science fighting to get in. When it does, it is pockmarked with briefs. A sordid tale, mellowed only by the fact that fresh science and medical stories now appear pretty much every day, which formerly was not the case. On the other hand, many are wire service.
As you would expect with the Newspaper of Record, the Times appears to archive everything, and the past year's worth can be had for $2.50 each. But be prepared for some frustration. In my last go-round, the poky and unreliable search engine missed relevant stories and generated a higgledy-piggledy hit list in no particular order.
One thing has not changed. The Tuesday section remains accessible for a week, and regular columns are archived for a longer spell, usually back to the beginning of the quarter. These are free. Non-Tuesday science stuff usually vanishes by the next day. But you may be able to retrieve a piece you need by consulting The Week in Science. This new Web-only column (find it on the main science page) includes links to the original stories it summarizes, and several weeks' worth is archived with the other free columns.
Two other continuing Good Things. Navigator purports to be the staff's very own list of Web sites useful to journalists. It's very useful indeed-comprehensive, detailed, well-organized. And, although the reason remains incomprehensible, you can still retrieve, at no charge, book reviews back to 1980.
Maybe it's opinion that wants to be free.
Tabitha M. Powledge can be reached via e-mail at tam@nasw.org.