A couple of days ago I was sitting at work when my wife emailed me an article by Adam Ruben. He’s a scientist who writes a humor column for Science. This one was about science journalism. I thought: Hey, I’m a science journalist, I like funny things, should be good. But a few paragraphs in, […]
Commentary
“Listening to a entrepreneurial physicist talking about how to get rich!” Apparently, that was my first tweet. I’ve got no idea who the physicist was, and the get-rich advice must not have been very good—I’m still in journalism. Yet for all my forgetfulness, Twitter remembers the exact moment I came into its life: March 17, […]
I spent the past two days at the Science Writing in the Age of Denial conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The event explored the phenomenon of denial and what it means for science writers. How can journalists effectively convey science when its uncomfortable truths face organized resistance?
April 2 – 6 The springtime snails are upon Cameron and she feels guilty about what she does to them. Michelle asks for poems about women scientists, in honor of Adrienne Rich. The Great Firewall of China, Heather discovers, has risen up and struck LWON down. Tom takes the prettiest pictures of the ickiest snails; […]
As a science journalist, I sympathize with book reviewers who wrestle with the question of whether to write negative reviews. It seems a waste of time to write about a dog of a book when there are so many other worthy ones; but readers deserve to know if Oprah is touting a real stinker. On […]
I know Erika already covered the Mike Daisey/TAL/Apple story and so did a lot of other people as smart as she is. But I’m a slow thinker, so I’m coming in to this a little late and out of left field. The left field in this case is epistemology, which is “the study of knowledge and justified belief.” […]
Last month, two journalists launched a new science and technology journalism project called Matter. Using the crowd-funding Web site Kickstarter, Jim Giles and Bobbie Johnson asked donors to help them raise $50,000 to start a venture that, every week, will publish “a single piece of top-tier long-form journalism about big issues in technology and science.” […]
First, a warning: Normally LaWonians talk about science. Today I failed. This post has nothing to do with science. I’m sorry. Marilyn Hagerty, a restaurant reviewer for the Grand Forks Herald, never expected to be famous. But then a new Olive Garden opened in Grand Forks. Hagerty reviewed it. And the rest is cyberspace history. […]