Media
pharyngula | April 5, 2010Here is why we need Wikileaks — because when our soldiers carry out Collateral Murder, we should know about it. Good journalism should be exposing this stuff for us.
This is a video shot from an American helicopter gunship in Iraq. It shows real human beings being shot to death. I wish I could unwatch seeing it now, so be advised before you click on that play button…it is horrific.
A couple of Iraqi journalists working for Reuters are slaughtered in the above clip, gunned down from a distance by American troops who claim their cameras are weapons, that they're walking around with AK-47s and…
clock | April 4, 2010In his ongoing series, Colin Schultz posted two excellent interviews, with Ferris Jabr and with Ed Yong. Both interviews are long-ish, and cover a lot of ground, e.g., about the importance of the "news hook" for science stories, the role of PIOs and press release sites, and the useless blogging vs. journalism wars.
clock | March 27, 2010This was a busy, crazy week.
On Monday and Tuesday I was in Boston. You may remember I went to Boston last year as well and for the same reason - spending a day at the WGNH studios, helping with the World Science project that combines radio, podcasts and online forums. You have probably noticed I have posted announcements of these throughout the year.
A short story airs on the radio show The World, about some science-related topic with a global angle. The same scientist (or physician, or science journalist) who is interviewed for a couple of minutes on air is also interviewed for 20 minutes…
revere | March 20, 2010We frequently use video clips on this site, many, but not all, from YouTube. To say YouTube has revolutionized web video content would be accurate, neither an understatement nor an exaggeration. The amount of material uploaded to YouTube is staggering. It is also the frequent target of specious take-down demands and is now the subject of a lawsuit by Viacom and other media giants alleging YouTube should check every upload for rights ownership. YouTube responds that such a requirement and threat of liability would put it, and most other service providers, out of business and points to explicit…
clock | March 18, 2010Journalism has always been communal
Top Google queries about scientists: should we be surprised?
Getting more out of scientific content
Telling tales...
The Science Reader: A Crowd-Sourced Profile
Journalism and the public understanding of how science works. A suggested remedy.
So what do the journalists and scientists think?
Evaluating science journalism - with a Matrix!
Ed Yong, Colin Schultz, & More: A bloggitty twitterview conversation on sci-journalism, awesomeness, dirt digging, and wonkiness.
Understanding push-pull market forces and promoting science to under-served audiences
Push…
clock | March 18, 2010First, I would like to welcome Gozde Zorlu to the blogosphere - check out her blog and say Hello. Gozde is a science journalism student with Connie St.Louis (the same class as Christine Ottery who many of you met at ScienceOnline2010).
Gozde is interested in many aspects of science communication and journalism and more:
Here, I'll be catapulting into the big world wide web my exploration of the social, cultural and political implications of research in science, medicine and the environment. Also, I'll be blogging about issues to do with science in the media, science education and policy.
In…
revere | March 18, 2010My lede was going to be, "I rarely watch local TV news anymore," until I realized that was false. Because I never look at local TV news. Why should I? I won't learn anything. I can get the weather faster on the internet and I'm not that interested in sports. What about the "local news," the news of my city, town or even state? I'm missing that, right? After all, a legal condition for the use of the public airways -- airways (frequencies) used by a TV station are therefore not available to others -- is that they operate in the public interest by providing "programming that is responsive to…
clock | March 17, 2010Danielle Lee, who just defended her PhD last week (her defense was livestreamed and livetweeted and liveblogged - Congratulations!!!!!!!!!) wrote a very thought-provoking post this morning - Understanding push-pull market forces and promoting science to under-served audiences. Go read it now.
If general public will not actively seek science content ('pull') than perhaps we can have the content come to them wherever they are ('push'). But people are scattered over gazillions of media places! How do we get to them everywhere? One answer is to try to get many people to contribute science-y…
pharyngula | March 16, 2010The media are lashing back. The post-convention media (with the exception of one article in the Australian) has been abysmally bad, relying on tried-and-true excuse-making from religious apologists. It would be nice if they actually had conversations with atheists rather than immediately running to the nearest cathedral for consolation, but I guess that's what they have to do now. After all, the convention was an unqualified success, a real triumph for the atheist movement, and they just can't have that.
Barney Zwartz is a concern troll. He's a believer; he presumably thinks religion and god…
clock | March 16, 2010An article in Christian Science Monitor, reporting from the AAAS meeting last month, quotes me in a couple of places: As Climate Change debate wages on, scientists turn to Hollywood for help - read the whole thing (it may not be obvious at first, but there are two pages there).
The must-read of the day is Ed Yong's The value of 'this is cool' science stories:
But for now, as newspapers decline and shrink, the worry is that the internet will only cater for established interests. As Colin asks, "All of my interviews have pointed out that strong story and strong characters can get someone to…
clock | March 16, 2010For several decades, journalism happened only in the three 'traditional' methods of communication: print, radio and television. The means of production of these is expensive, thus owned only by wealthy individuals or corporations, or heavily subsidized by such (through advertising and such). One unifying trait of the three technical modes of traditional media is that they are all broadcast media: one-to-many. As such a state of things persisted for several decades and journalism got professionalized during this period, a common cultural definition of journalism emerged: whatever is done by…
clock | March 15, 2010Elia Ben-Ari, on her 'To Be Determined' blog, wrote an excellent, thought-provoking post on the fine distinctions between science journalists and Press Information Officers: More on the Science Journalism Ecosystem and What Is and Is Not Science Journalism
...And an understanding of the underlying science is certainly helpful in reporting the "something smells fishy" stories as well as the "wow, that's neat" stories. I maintain that one person can and may do both types of science reporting, so it doesn't make sense to separate "investigative journalism" from "science journalism."...…
revere | March 15, 2010I've had occasion to remark a number of times how much of what is reported as "science news" is just warmed over press releases from university media departments or company flacks. I read them anyway, often sucked in my a headline that turns out to oversell the case. Now I'm becoming aware headlines can also (deliberately) undersell the case. Consider two press releases that came out on virtually the same day, one from Big Pharma Pfizer, the other from biotech player, Genentech, owned by Big Pharma's Roche (maker of Tamiflu). Pfizer, first.
The headline pretty much tells the whole story, as…
clock | March 13, 2010Lots of interesting stuff this week, so I decided to put everything in a single post - makes it easier for everyone....
First, there was a very nice article in Columbia Journalism Review (which someone subscribed me to - I guess because my name appeared there the other week....someone is trying to remind me how it feels to read stuff written on actual paper!) about the beginning of a resurgence of science journalism in North Carolina. The article covers all the bases, focusing mostly on the new Monday science pages produced collaboratively by The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News &…
cpikas | March 13, 2010 Myths abound about how scientists do not talk with the media or communicate with the public and if they do so, it is only because they are required to by funders' "broader impact" requirements. The evidence, however, does not support this view.
This article is another in a series of communications based on a multi-national study of how scientists in several fields communicate with the media. (you might have seen [1] or [2]). This article only uses data from US scientists who were recently corresponding authors on peer reviewed articles in stem cell research and epidemiology (survey sent to…
clock | March 10, 2010Almost a year ago, Nature published a set of opinion articles, including Science journalism: Toppling the priesthood by Toby Murcott. I did not react at the time, but JR Minkel and Jessica Palmer did and got some interesting responses in the comments. The article was brought to my attention by Gozde Zorlu who is ruminating on the same ideas and will have a blog post about it shortly (and I will let you know when it's up).
The article covers a lot of ground and has many layers. I finally read it and these are just some really quick thoughts, just to provoke discussion.....
First, Murcott is…
clock | March 9, 2010The Online News Association organizes a meeting every year (and gives Online Journalism Awards there). The next one will be in October 28-30, 2010 in Washington, D.C.
The program is formed by the online news community submitting proposals, then everyone else voting the proposals up or down. I guess that the organizers also have some say in it (especially if the voting produces a horrible gender imbalance - easy to happen with so many proposals put forward by men).
The proposals are now all up online and ready for your votes - you need to register (they have to avoid spammers, robots,…
revere | March 3, 2010The Reveres consider themselves progressives (check the masthead), a word used for people who believe government has a role to play to make the world better, but also tend to be social libertarians. Many scientists and doctors are progressive in that sense. But it's a mighty big tent, and apparently covers some folks whose politics I agree with on many issues but can still be very far from what progressives also call the "reality based community." Very far. Far, as in "they can't see it from where they are."
Literally:
Atlanta Progressive News has parted ways with long-serving senior staff…
clock | March 2, 2010You may be aware that, as of recently, one of my tasks at work is to monitor media coverage of PLoS ONE articles. This is necessary for our own archives and monthly/annual reports, but also so I could highlight some of the best media coverage on the everyONE blog for everyone to see. As PLoS ONE publishes a large number of articles every week, we presume that many of you would appreciate getting your attention drawn to that subset of articles that the media found most interesting.
So, for example, as I missed last week due to my trip to AAAS, I posted a two-week summary of media coverage this…
pharyngula | March 2, 2010…is that too often newspapers think you don't need a science journalist to write it. Any ol' hack will do. Take this article on evolution in the Vancouver Sun, which distills modern evolutionary biology into 12 theories, which happens to include Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy as well as Intelligent Design creationism — which, at least, is pairing intellectual equals. The author, Douglas Todd, is speaking High Crackbrain and making stuff up. It's all garbage from a buffoon who knows nothing about the field. What, you have to wonder, qualifies him to be writing on science?
Jerry Coyne has the…