Good News for Science Writing
Just announced today: The Columbia Journalism Review is setting up a special department, to critique science and environment reporting.
This is a good thing on at least two levels. First — as the announcement notes, science/environment reporting staffs and news holes are shrinking at MSM outlets around the country. In that context its useful to have anything that brings attention to this crucial beat — and it’s even better coming in a journal read by decision makers in the profession.
Second: The CJR confirms what we all know to be true: the leading edge of science/environmental journalism has moved to the web, to big aggregators like Scienceblogs.com and MIT’s own Knight Science Journalism Tracker (got to plug the home institution every now and then) and others, and a much larger cyberbestiary of science sites, blogs and wikis and so on. As CJR notes, the quality of coverage in this brave new jungle varies from excellent to unspeakable. Scrutiny can only do us good.
(File that last under “be careful what you wish for.”)
Update: I rewrote that last couple of sentences because I felt like it. (Plus, it makes more sense,) Image: Paul Cezanne, “Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cezanne,” 1866. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Source: Wikipedia Commons.
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