Guest Post: Talk to Them, Just Talk to Them

Scientists, policymakers, FDA officials, industry spokespersons–talk to my science journalism students! Yes, they haven’t received their masters degrees yet from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP); and yes, most of them are newbies to the profession. But you shouldn’t ignore their emails or make them send reminder messages two or three […]

The Rime of the Ancient Astronomers

I received an email the other day from Nicholas Suntzeff, the director of the Astronomy Program at Texas A&M as well as a friend. (Readers might remember that he has published two guest posts with LWON.) His email was in fact a series of emails that he thought I might enjoy. It started with a […]

Toe Fungus And Why No One Loves a Science Writer

Have you ever gone to a cocktail party and had a conversation about science? Of course not – nobody goes to cocktail parties anymore. Perhaps a better question would be, have you either gone to a vinyl listening event or underground pop-up restaurant and gotten in a conversation about science? We’ve all done it. You’re […]

Curses, cursive!

I used to practice my signature everywhere. I wrote on napkins and notebooks, in crayon on restaurant placemats, with a finger in the wet sand. I even remember a grade-school art project in which I wrote my name and its mirror image, and then used the pair to create a creature: the top loops of […]

Love City

For every story that makes it to print, there are scads that die in the reporting trenches. This is one of those stories. In 2001, I moved to Bolivia to become a Peace Corps volunteer and fell deeply in love with the country. In 2010, I returned. I wanted to visit friends and family, but, […]

Conversation with Dan Vergano: the Science Ghetto

Ann:  In the last year or more or so, science writers have had Twitterfights with a culture/media writer, a nonfiction writer, and a script writer.   After the latest fight another science writer, the wise and civilized Dan Vergano of USA Today, Twitter-messaged me that he wished these fights would stop because they reinforced the walls […]

Science Writer Stares Out Window

Why are the clouds moving so fast? Is the wind that’s pushing the clouds faster than the wind that’s blowing the trees?  I remember, back when I lived in tornado country, hearing that when the winds aloft and the winds on the ground were moving in different directions, a tornado could form.  Was that true?  […]

Conversation: Girls Reading Boy Books

Ann:  May I introduce my friend and colleague, Sharon Weinberger. She once wrote a book about her trips to the world’s various nuclear test sites and it sold reasonably well, probably to boys.  But recently somebody else’s book, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold History of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, […]