Author Archive
-
The Observatory
Keystone XL Jobs Bewilder Media
January 24, 2012 04:30 PMGod help the poor news consumers of America, especially the would-be voters. President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline last week incited a new wave of coverage and speculation about how many jobs the line would create. Unfortunately,... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Does Big Pharma Pay Your Doctor?
January 19, 2012 02:30 PMHow useful would a database cataloguing the money that doctors receive from medical drug and device makers—for speaking, research, meals, travel, etc.—be to journalists trying to ferret out potential conflicts of interest? Just ask ProPublica, which launched its... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Critical Juncture for HuffPo Science
January 13, 2012 12:00 PMThe Huffington Post’s announcement last week that it had launched a new section intended to be a “one-stop shop for the latest scientific news and opinion” incited a flurry of circumspect commentary about whether or not... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Down, But Not Out?
January 10, 2012 10:00 AMJust how scarce was climate-change coverage in 2011? It’s hard to get a fix on the details, but the broad conclusion that it was even scarcer than in the year before seems to hold up. Last week, I wrote a... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Climate Coverage Crashes
January 4, 2012 04:45 PMTwelve months ago, The Daily Climate, a website that produces and tracks media stories about climate change, declared that 2010 was “the year climate coverage ‘fell off the map.’” The downward spiral continued in 2011, a... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Best of 2011: The Observatory
December 30, 2011 06:00 AMThe Hottest Thing in Science Blogging: The hot ticket for science bloggers and online writers this year was ScienceOnline, a once-obscure North Carolina conference with only about 300 coveted seats available. It sold out in less than forty-five... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Methane Mysteries
December 21, 2011 02:00 PMMethane—a potent greenhouse gas that could be released in vast quantities as climate change melts Arctic permafrost—has received quite a bit of media attention in the last month. But the coverage has caused a bit of confusion about where the... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Phone-Hacking Inquiry Eyes Science Journalism
December 16, 2011 04:00 PMThe Leveson inquiry into the “culture, practice, and ethics” of the British press resulting from the News International phone-hacking scandal has caught science journalism in its tractor beam. In the course of his opening statement in... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Newsweek Fetishizes an “Epidemic”
December 15, 2011 03:30 PMA “sex addiction epidemic” is unfolding like a plague in the US, according a recent Newsweek cover story—but don’t reach for the chastity belt just yet. The over-stimulated article is weakly reported, superficial, and perpetuates confusion about sexual... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Frozen Planet’s Final Episode Will Air in US
December 7, 2011 06:00 PMDiscovery Channel reversed course on Tuesday when it announced that it would air all seven parts of a BBC series about Earth’s polar regions, including a final episode about climate change, which it originally said it would forgo.... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Besser to Oz: “You Were Right”
December 6, 2011 11:00 AMAfter accusing Dr. Mehmet Oz of “fear mongering” for reporting that some brands of apple juice contained high levels of arsenic, ABC News’s senior health and medical editor, Dr. Richard Besser, was forced to concede last week that Oz was... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
UEA E-Mails Fail to Provoke
November 30, 2011 02:00 PMUneager, perhaps, to provoke the type of criticism that followed the dreadful coverage the “Climategate,” journalists have treated the emergence of a new cache of e-mails (apparently collected at the same time as the first) with a skepticism... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Congress Nixes Climate Service
November 21, 2011 03:45 PMCongress has denied the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) bid to create a promising “one stop shop” for data and information about climate, according to a scoop in The Washington Post. NOAA’s budget request for... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
WSJ Marginalizes Muller
November 17, 2011 05:00 PMMedia Matters, a group dedicated to bird-dogging conservative spin in the press, made a good catch last week when it pointed out that The Wall Street Journal didn’t publish a wave-making op-ed that disavowed global-warming skepticism in its... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Frozen Planet Freezes Out Climate
November 16, 2011 02:45 PMThe BBC is taking a mild pummeling for giving foreign television networks the option not to buy an episode about climate change when purchasing rights to air a nature and wildlife series about Earth’s polar regions. British viewers will see... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
The Kochs and Keystone XL
November 9, 2011 04:45 PMKoch Industries, a giant oil and energy conglomerate, has InsideClimate News, a four-year-old online news startup, in its crosshairs. In October, the company launched an online ad campaign via Google, Facebook, and its KochFacts.com website (which rebuts coverage it finds... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Like the Odds of a Heart Attack?
November 3, 2011 12:30 PMWith the latest death toll from floods in Thailand reaching nearly 400 people, reporters have had yet another opportunity to explore the connection between climate change and extreme weather events. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times published an... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Cracking the Case
October 28, 2011 02:00 PMThe federal civil and criminal investigations of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continue to be a source of frustration for the press, not in and of themselves, but rather because they thwart reporters’ access to certain... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
Salazar Calls for Coverage
October 25, 2011 04:15 PMSecretary of the Interior Ken Salazar had a few tips for environmental journalists last week about under-covered stories on their beat. Speaking at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ twenty-first annual conference here in Miami, Salazar said... Continue reading
-
The Observatory
The Scientist Lives
October 18, 2011 11:30 AMA potential buyer has emerged to save The Scientist from early retirement. A week after it was reported that the life-science magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary issue would be its last, LabX Media Group announced that... Continue reading
—advertisement—
Desks
The Audit Business
- Audit Notes: pyramid people, Disney and ABC, no USA Today paywall Roddy Boyd digs into a diet-shake pyramid scheme
- Hot air Rises Above on CNBC An anchor pins a minor dip in stocks on the TV appearance of a minor politician
The Observatory Science
- Dull news from Doha UN climate summit a ho-hum affair for the press
- Highway to the danger zone Following Sandy, HuffPo and NYT dig into the folly of coastal development
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- NBC News sets good example for Medicare reporting People perspective leads to clear explanation of impact of proposed changes
- In Pennsylvania, a niche site with wide reach PoliticsPA drives political conversation in Keystone State
Behind the News The Media
Blog
The Kicker last updated: Fri 3:00 PM
- Must-reads of the week
- The media news cycle is bananas
- Pass the #popcorn
- Must-reads of the week
- Tom Rosenstiel leaving Pew
The Future of Media
News Startups Guide last updated: Thu 10:24 AM
- TRVL A free iPad travel magazine
- TheDigitel A small chain of local news sites/ aggregators in South Carolina