The Washington Post has a regular column called “The Fact Checker,” by Glenn Kessler, a longtime Post reporter. It’s a relatively new feature. Earlier this year, Kessler described the column’s origins and purpose: My colleague Michael Dobbs started the column during the 2008 [Presidential] campaign and now, in 2011, The Washington Post is reviving it as…Continue Reading…
If you read Andy Revkin’s dispatch from this one-day conference in London on the Anthropocene concept, you’ll discover: I’m attending because of a quirky role I played almost 20 years ago in laying the groundwork for this concept of humans as a geological force. I’m starting to think Andy is the Zelig of the environmental…Continue Reading…
Charlie Petit at Science Tracker has a confession. He doesn’t think he’s the only one, either: A lot of science journalists who cover energy issues have probably gone through an infatuation stage, and then break-up, with a seductive actor: Peak Oil. It appeals to any reporter trying to cover a beat where numbers and natural…Continue Reading…
Bryan Walsh at Time beat me to the punch. I’ll get back to that in a sec. Originally my post was going to lead off with a comment from Orville Schell in the early 2000s, when he was dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, in Berkley and the downsizing…Continue Reading…
Goes to this cautionary flashback: I love the New Yorker and over the years they have published many fine articles on science by bright and knowledgeable writers including Lehrer (e.g., John McPhee, Jonathon Schell, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Jeremy Bernstein, Atul Gawande, Malcom Gladwell). Despite this excellent record of science translation, it is useful to…Continue Reading…
Earlier this week, Jonah Lehrer responded yet again to some of the criticism leveled at his recent New Yorker article. Orac, who wasn’t pleased with the article, is still not pleased with Lehrer’s defense of it. This is a case of an expert (Orac) thinking that he is the prime audience for a general interest…Continue Reading…
I’m going to nitpick this lament by James Fallows: One of the basic functions of journalism is to say: This is true, and that is false. There are other functions, but establishing bedrock “world is round / sun rises in the east / 1+ 1 = 2” verities is a big one. In today’s political…Continue Reading…
The crusading, hydra-headed anti-vaccine movement deserves more consistent coverage in the media. Here’s the title of today’s press release from the American Academy of Pediatrics: How the anti-vaccine movement threatens America’s children Paul Offit, a pediatrician and the author of “Autism’s False Prophets,” (who didn’t tour bookstores because of death threats he received from the…Continue Reading…
There’s been a fair amount of fretting over science journalism lately. It’s taken the form of earnest criticism and parody. (For an arch rejoinder to the latter, see this post by one of the science reporters at The Economist.) Even Jay Rosen, whose meta mind scans of mainstream media tend to focus on political journalism,…Continue Reading…