Journalism
ddobbs | January 19, 2009Seth Godin offers another take on what we might miss if/when newspapers die: investigative journalism.
What's left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper. I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn't a passionate, unbiased reporter there to…
ddobbs | January 13, 2009
Steven Waldman: Why the Huffington Post Can't Replace The New York Times
The idea that the Huffington Post, or the explosion of interesting internet news or blogging sites, can replace journalistic institutions like the New York times or other newspapers or dinosaurs of the mainstream media truly misunderstands the web, newspapers, journalism and the serious threat posed to democracy if the news gathering institutions fail.
I think Waldman has this right. Michael Hirschorn's Atlantic piece pondering the death of the Times is plenty interesting, and good food for thought. But -- even aside…
drorzel | January 4, 2009The posts selected for the 2009 edition of The Open Laboratory, collecting the best writing on science blogs for the year, have been announced. My We Are Science post made the list, which is nice.
Amusingly, this showed up in my inbox at the same time that the ScienceBlogs front page is featuring this Bloggingheads episode featuring George Johnson and John Horgan. Johnson, you might recall, riled everybody up a couple of weeks ago with a bit of a dyspeptic rant about science bloggers compared to science journalists. They spend a good fifteen or twenty minutes on the topic again this week, and…
terrasig | October 16, 2008We here at the Terra Sig World Headquarters have been inundated with traffic directed by search engines following our post the other day directing readers to the NPR story on Douglas Prasher. Prasher, as is now widely known, is the former Woods Hole science who cloned the cDNA for green fluorescent protein (GFP) that enabled the work leading to this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry to at least two of the three laureates. Prasher is currently driving a courtesy shuttle for Bill Penney Toyota in Huntsville, AL, for $10 (USD) per hour. Prasher had been working for NASA in Huntsville until his…
terrasig | October 8, 2008I am about to lead a discussion of science and medical blogs with a group of journalism students in a course entitled, Medical Journalism. While many of the students are specifically majoring in medical and science journalism in a master's program, some are undergraduates in general journalism and mass communications looking to get a flavor for medical writing for print and broadcast.
My question to the valued readers of this humble blog is:
What would you tell these young, knowledge-seeking minds about how science and medical blogs and bloggers might contribute to their future careers as "…
terrasig | October 5, 2008The author, human rights activist, folklorist, and environmentalist, Stetson Kennedy, is celebrating his 92nd birthday today in the company of friends and family near St. Augustine, Florida.
His website, StetsonKennedy.com, used to have a guestbook but the webmaster, his grandson Sean, took it down after extensive spamming.
So, please leave your birthday wishes in the comments below as we have it on very good authority that those close to Stetson actually read Terra Sigillata.
Much of my generation probably only knows Stetson Kennedy as the Klan-busting infiltrator popularized in…
awild | September 16, 2008Here's something that bugs me. Instead of emphasizing the real significance of the find, a discovery like the "Mars ant" Martialis heureka is usually condensed down to "Wow, this ant is weird!".
I've pasted below a sampling of leads:
Newly-Discovered Bizarre Ant - Boing Boing
'Ant From Mars' Discovered in Amazon Rainforest - Fox News
'Ant from Mars' found in Amazon jungle - Science News
But weirdness misses the point. We have weird ants already. The suicidal exploding Camponotus is plenty weird. So are the gliding ants, and the ants that swim. The real story here is the…
terrasig | July 16, 2008While I threaten to come back to real blogging, let me direct you to Orac's recent post on the loss of their family dog, Echo - the dog who ate corn off the cob (YouTube evidence therein).
Orac is a great writer but a lot of you know him mostly from his expertise in cancer medicine and in decrying all kids of pseudoscience. He may also seem on the surface to be a tough, unflappable medical professional, as one might expect from any high-powered academic surgeon.
However, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Orac personally and will divulge that he is really a sweetheart of a guy. And as…
edyong | July 10, 2008
It seems that every scientist has an anecdote about being misquoted, misrepresented or otherwise misled by that most seemingly dangerous of foes - the journalist. And yet, a new survey published in Science suggests that beyond the horror stories, conflict between the two professions is much less volatile than you might imagine. To scientists, it seems that journalists are more likely to be back-slapping comrades than back-stabbing adversaries.
The interaction between science and the media is an area close to my heart. I am steeped in it in both my full-time job and my freelance work and I'…
terrasig | July 3, 2008Well, you readers here really know how to draw attention to an issue. We're not a high-traffic blog but those of you who read regularly are quite thoughtful, insightful, and, now, influential.
Our little post the other day on the application of the ideal gas law in discussing the NPR/StoryCorps segment on the exploding bra of a now-94-year-old woman caught the attention of StoryCorps Senior Producer, Michael Garofalo. Mr Garofalo wished to respond to our post and several commenters who noted that the exploding bra story was the stuff of urban legend, such that snopes.com traced back to a…
terrasig | May 30, 2008While I tend to off-blog responsibilities, you may be interested to read this lovely essay by Jonathan Alter in the current (2 June) issue of Newsweek entitled, "How We Really Help Ted."
There was a time when mentioning Kennedy and Jimmy Carter (or Carter's right hand) in the same breath would have meant a story about a Democratic family feud even more bitter than this year's between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But today these men offer priceless lessons in how to overcome endless adversity and deep unpopularity and go on to lead redemptive and joyful lives that touch millions. Their…
jstemwedel | April 15, 2008I heard a piece by David Kestenbaum on NPR's "Morning Edition" that hasn't been sitting right with me. You, dear readers, get to help me figure out what's bugging me about the story, a profile of 16-year-old climate skeptic Kristen Byrnes.
Here are some details about Kristen Byrnes from the story:
"I don't remember how old I was when I started getting into global warming," Kristen says. "In middle school I remember everyone was like: 'Global warming! The world is going to end!' Stuff like that ... so I never really believed in it." ...
[S]he has a quality scientists try to cultivate: she is…
jstemwedel | April 10, 2008I haven't given up yet. You know I'm still looking for more clarity on the basic premises of framing. I tried to work out what does and does not fall within the framing strategy in a flowcharted example and (again) came away with a bunch of unanswered questions.
This round, I'm going to look at an example from the Nisbet and Scheufele article in The Scientist (a link to the PDF given here. I'll confess that I'm still confused, but I think I'm getting closer to identifying precisely what I'm confused about.
Here's what Nisbet and Scheufele say in The Scientist article about communication…
jstemwedel | April 5, 2008You'll remember that I tried to work out precisely what was being claimed in the premises behind framing set out by Chris Mooney. At the end of this exercise, I was left with the hunch that one's optimal communication strategy -- and how much scientific detail it will require -- might depend an awful lot on what kind of message you're trying to get across to your audience, to the point where trying to generalize about framing doesn't seem very helpful. At least, it's not helpful to me as I'm still trying to understand the strategy.
So, I'm hopeful that those who are hip to the framing thing…
jstemwedel | April 2, 2008Chris Mooney lays out the argument behind "framing". I give my thoughts, item by item.
1. We have long-running politicized science controversies on subjects like evolution and climate change, with separate polarized camps and the repeated use and misuse of complex scientific information in the arguments.
I'm not sure it's fair to characterize the controversies alluded to as "scientific" controversies. It's easier to make a case for scientific disagreement around climate change (at least, in terms of precisely how much human activity contributes, where the tipping point is, what exactly we…
jstemwedel | January 23, 2008Maybe you saw the story in the New York Times about new research that may show that ingesting too much caffeine while pregnant increases the chances of miscarriage. And, if you're like me, one of the first things you did was try to track down the actual research paper discussed in the newspaper article.
If so, I hope you've had better luck than I have.
The New York Times article (dated January 20 -- that was a Sunday) describes the research as "to be published Monday in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology" and identifies "the lead author of the study" as De-Kun Li. Writing…
voltagegate | December 31, 2007It's quite simple really. Just leave out the details:
The near extinction of the western barred bandicoot has led to the identification of a novel virus exhibiting characteristics of two ancient virus families.
The western barred bandicoot (WWB), an Australian marsupial once commonly found across western and southern Australia, is now endangered throughout parts of the country and already extinct on the mainland. While promoting conservation efforts, researchers discovered a debilitating disease affecting the species causing full body lesions.
Papillomaviruses (PVs) and polyomaviruses (PyVs)…
terrasig | September 19, 2007This e-mail just came in overnight - a great move by the New York Times:
Dear TimesSelect Subscriber,
We are ending TimesSelect, effective today.
The Times's Op-Ed and news columns are now available to everyone free of charge, along with Times File and News Tracker. In addition, The New York Times online Archive is now free back to 1987 for all of our readers.
Why the change?
Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free…
terrasig | September 2, 2007As I noted last evening, the world of beer and spirits is mourning the loss of British writer and libation enthusiast, Michael Jackson. Jackson was suffering from Parkinson's disease but succumbed to a heart attack earlier this week at age 65.
Jackson's Beer Hunter website/blog notes that a national toast to Jackson will be held on 30 September, with all proceeds to benefit the US National Parkinson Foundation. Stan Hieronymus writes:
If you know a brewpub, bar, tavern, ale house, tap house, multi-tap or similar establishment that might participate urge them to do so. Information will be…
jstemwedel | June 21, 2007I'm late to this round of the discussion about scientists and journalists (for which, as usually, Bora compiles a comprehensive list of links). The question that seems to have kicked off this round is why scientists are sometimes reluctant to agree to interviews, especially given how often they express their concern that the larger public seems uninterested in and uninformed about matters scientific.
As I have some interest in this topic, I'm going to add a few thoughts to the pile:
Does reporting on science have a tendency to misrepresent science?
This is a long-standing concern -- that, in…