When I was in high school I had a bunch of money-earning jobs. I raked yards in the Fall (leaf bags galore!), shoveled driveways in the winter, and delivered newspapers year-round. (I really hated those thick Sunday papers back then.) This meant I had cash on hand to feed my record-buying habit and enough to…Continue Reading…
If the writer of a magazine story admits to significant errors in his piece, shouldn’t the publication then acknowledge this with an editor’s note, providing corrections? I ask because there are new developments to the story about that botched article in The Atlantic, which, as I wrote here, used this study as a springboard to raise concerns…Continue Reading…
Yesterday, I called attention to a deeply flawed article published online by The Atlantic, that used this study as a springboard to raise concerns about GMO foods. Biotechnology, like climate science, is prone to distortion by those who feel passionate about it. The debate on GMO’s and climate change is most heated and misrepresented on…Continue Reading…
I’m making a decree: Food columnists should no longer be writing about anything other than recipes and restaurants. When they stray from their area of expertise, what results is too often ugly and harmful to the public interest. For example, I’ve previously pointed out where some food writers go badly off the tracks. The latest…Continue Reading…
Last week, the Huffington Post unveiled a new science section. Science bloggers and science writers aren’t sure what to make of it. Some, such as Mark Hoofnagle, are cautiously hopeful. As he notes, the Huffington Post has up to now been notorious (at least in the science blogosphere) as a “clearinghouse” for “liberal crankery,” featuring things…Continue Reading…
I started Collide-a-Scape in January 2009, when I was a Fellow at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism ( CEJ). Initially, I envisioned blogging about the Southwest. It was to be a continuation of the energy, ecology, and archaeology stories I had already been writing during the 2000s, for various publications and for…Continue Reading…
In a new post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I write: In 2011, there were numerous themes that ran through climate change media coverage: 1) crazy weather, 2) a litmus test for Republicans, 3) man bites dog, 4) evidence of an actual climate movement, and 5) futility. What’s that, you think…Continue Reading…
There are two recent critiques of science journalism that paint very different pictures of the profession. One of them, an editorial in Nature this week, is more broadly aimed at the news media in general, and decries “scientific ignorance of the press,” agenda-driven stories, and “journalism that favors attitude over accuracy.” The criticism is directed at…Continue Reading…
Some of the commentary about how the media covered last week’s big climate sensitivity study in Science prompted me to explore underlying issues that have already been identified by people much smarter than me. Have a read over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media.
This CJR story by Dean Starkman is being widely disseminated and discussed in journalism circles. Here’s what it’s about: No one reading this magazine needs to be told that we have crossed over into a new era. Industrial-age journalism has failed, we are told, and even if it hasn’t failed, it is over. Newspaper company stocks…Continue Reading…