The Observatory

Mind Games

Can neuroscience explain the crisis in news?

By Todd Gitlin   Apr 15, 2010 at 10:42 AM

What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism | By Jack Fuller | University of... More

Maternal Mortality Mix-Up

Press turns out disjointed coverage of politics, data

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 14, 2010 at 04:07 PM

A slew of news articles this week have focused on two recent reports about the number of women who die... More

Science, Environment, & the 2010 Pulitzers

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 13, 2010 at 11:24 AM

A tip o’ the hat to these science, environment, and health related Pulitzer winners: Public Service – The Bristol Herald... More

A Rosy Future for Cancer Vaccines?

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette thinks so

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 12, 2010 at 12:01 PM

There’s a trope in medicine that doctors only have three ways of dealing with cancer: cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), and... More

Calling Katrina

New Orleans Times-Picayune’s 2005 hurricane coverage included in NYU’s “Top 10 Works of the Decade”

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 6, 2010 at 04:07 PM

The New Orleans Times-Picayune’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina from August to December 2005 has been named one of the top... More

Local Paper Leads Way on Mine Disaster Coverage

By Greg Marx   Apr 6, 2010 at 12:24 PM

With much of the national media’s focus turned to West Virginia today in the wake of yet another mine disaster,... More

Gaga for Technology

Can the media ease their addiction to the new new thing?

By Susan Moran   Apr 5, 2010 at 03:41 PM

CAMBRIDGE, Ma.—As journalists, we're often caught in a cycle of “hype and disappointment,” said Bryan Walsh, national environment writer for... More

Got Science Reporters?

New USC health news service stirs debate because it doesn’t

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 2, 2010 at 03:30 PM

On the last Friday in March, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism announced the staff... More

Dot Earth Moves to NYT Opinion Section

Revkin: “I will say what I think, in ways I could not before”

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 1, 2010 at 06:00 AM

After two-and-a-half years and 940 posts as a news blog, Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth site will be moving to the... More

Nature News Now Free of Charge

Publisher sees no competition with Scientific American

By Thomas K. Zellers   Mar 31, 2010 at 10:23 AM

Last Friday, the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced that readers would no longer need a subscription to view content on... More

More on Weathermen as Climate Skeptics

NYT weighs in with front-page treatment

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 30, 2010 at 01:37 PM

The New York Times’s front-page story on high levels of climate skepticism among TV weather forecasters might have seemed a... More

Meat vs. Miles

Coverage of livestock, transportation emissions hypes controversy

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 29, 2010 at 03:44 PM

For the last four years, media outlets such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Fox News... More

Stories Percolate on World Water Day

National Geographic dives in with special issue

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 23, 2010 at 12:20 PM

By 2025, 1.8 billion people are expected to live in areas where water is scarce—a prediction, among many troubling others,... More

When the Well Runs Dry

Is Duke Energy’s support for a new SciTech section a problem?

By The Editors   Mar 16, 2010 at 02:16 PM

Last week, CJR’s online science desk, The Observatory, ran a story about the launch of a new weekly science and... More

Reviving Science Coverage in the Carolinas

Weekly newspaper section, community-journalism project deliver fresh content

By Thomas K. Zellers   Mar 11, 2010 at 04:44 PM

At a time when weekly newspaper science sections are as rare as a single top quark, two North Carolina newspapers... More