Rennie complained that because of the mad rush to report any new finding, a lot of the ensuing coverage is identically unimpressive. The antidote, he argued, is delaying coverage and sacrificing the “newness” for thoroughness and context, and while he did not explicitly say that help bring science out of the echo chamber, there is every reason to believe that it could. A week after penning his column for The Guardian, Rennie wrote a post at his PLoS blog, The Gleaming Retort, that highlighted reporting by Yong, which “keyed off a new paper on induced pluripotent stem cells,” but broke the “usual mold” by doing two things. First, Yong reissued an older story he’d written, updating it with information about the new paper:
Then, even more creatively, he used the online tools at Dipity.com to create an interactive timeline recapping the history of reprogrammed stem cell research. In fact, the timeline was noteworthy enough that Ed was instantly able to syndicate it to the Guardian.
In other words, Yong escaped the echo chamber with a little innovative storytelling (the Nieman Journalism Lab and the Knight Science Journalism Tracker also ran posts calling attention to the timeline). Such triumphs do not come easy, of course, but the proof is in the digital pudding. Struggling to pull science out of the media echo chamber will always be challenge, but a new (scientific) method is emerging online that will help writers of all stripes in that endeavor. And it should be clear by now that the emergence of new technologies is alleviating, rather than exacerbating, the ages-old “ghettoization” problem.
I would urge anyone honestly interested in this topic to read the Am. Acad. Arts & Sci's 2010 report: http://www.amacad.org/pdfs/scienceMedia.pdf there is a lot of good history of science media in here and data. It may very well be true that the energy and verve of science blogs (altho having written online science stories since 1995, I'm not sure) will expand the audience. But the trend of broadcast outlets letting science go uncovered or covered baldly doesn't bode well.
The 'science ghetto' described by Thomas Hayden in the last decade was the one limiting science writers to quaint science topics, and leaving writers without any technical background to tackle the big issues of the day. A good sign will be if science writers are writing the 'climate change links to Egypt's revolution?' story for large outlets, rather than political reporters.
#1 Posted by Dan Vergano, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 07:57 PM
I agree with Zimmer that word choice is key to avoid scaring off an audience. I recently started a blog for a communicating science class of mine, and my first hurdle to overcome was writing without using jargon while still developing my message. I didn't really think about avoiding the cliches or euphemisms though, but it really makes sense to do so. Using unnecessary words just bogs down the message and makes reading a chore.
Overall, I have to applaud this post on its importance to scientists who want to improve their communication. It is no dispute that many could benefit from taking lessons on exactly this type of writing analysis.
#2 Posted by Benito El Jefe, CJR on Tue 15 Feb 2011 at 09:09 PM