Science Writers and Science Bloggers
Is It "War," or Is It "Marriage"?
SOURCE: SP
Having just moved his blog from one mainstream outlet to another, our Contributing Editor considers the many hats science bloggers now wear in an era of struggling science journalism.
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Amid all the layoffs in the traditional science journalism field, which I’ve been writing about here for some time, the focus of chatter has quite naturally shifted to an inevitable question: Do science blogs serve as any real replacement?
Science, Cultured
Science Progress contributing editor Chris Mooney surveys the interactions between science, politics, and culture. He is the author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.” (Photo: flickr.com/sarahfelicity)
As it happens, I stand in a rather interesting place to discuss this, having just moved my own co-authored science blog, “The Intersection,” to Discover Blogs on Monday, and for this reason finding myself hailed by Columbia Journalism Review as part of a trend of mainstream media outlets (the dreaded “MSM”) acquiring science-centered blogs and blog content.
A recent cover feature in the magazine Nature by writer Geoff Brumfiel stirred all this up. “Supplanting the old media?” it reads. “Science journalism is in decline; science blogging is growing fast. But can the one replace the other?” In reply, Curtis Brainard at Columbia Journalism Review’s “The Observatory” pointed out that Brumfiel and Nature might be constructing an artificial dichotomy. Brainard highlighted Discover’s burgeoning blog collection as an example of a marriage of old and new media in the science arena, and added: “next week the site will add another ‘top-ten’ blog from the Scienceblogs.com community.”
I don’t know about “top ten,” but that was us.
I feel very conflicted about all this. As both a science journalist and also a science blogger, I would be one messed up dude if I loathed either activity. Clearly there is no sharp dichotomy between blogging and journalism in the science field if the two merge in a person like myself, or in many others, like Carl Zimmer or Rebecca Skloot or Jennifer Ouellette.
Yet while I certainly enjoy blogging and feel it has many benefits—and we’re psyched to be at Discover—I actually side more with Nature and Brumfield than with Brainard in this dialogue. I don’t really see how blogging works as a substitute for traditional science journalism, and I question talk of “marriage” between the two when so many traditional science journalists are losing the jobs—and also, sad to say, when many science bloggers seem to have an adversarial stance toward their science journalist peers (and perhaps vice-versa).
So all the problems during this time of transition that Nature describes (and that many others have highlighted) resonate with me: Blogs have smaller, more specialized audiences. Most of the time, bloggers don’t have journalistic training and don’t “report.” And so on.
But there’s a deeper, and indeed, fundamental difference here that seems to me to have been elided, especially by Brainard. For the most part, blogging isn’t a career. As matters currently stand, most bloggers can’t expect to support a family, get health insurance, a retirement plan, etc, simply through blogging alone. At best they’re the equivalent of faculty adjuncts, never destined for the tenure track.
That’s why the science journalists who you find blogging tend to be freelance or unattached science journalists, and also book authors. We’re entrepreneurs and hacks of all trades; we do a whole bunch of different kinds of things; blogging is just one more to add on the pile. (And we’d be glad to take adjunct work too!)
In other words, our economic models are individualistic and entrepreneurial. One can scarcely doubt that there will always be people in the media willing—or crazy enough—to roll this way. We’re the types to to cry “Freedom!” at the top of our lungs while the media industry removes our entrails. But the question is, what happens to everybody else? The death of traditional science journalism is a death of pensions, healthcare, and childbearing leave. It is a harsh exposure of science journalism to the elements.
That’s why it was so beyond the pale to find a university faculty scientist and science blogger, University of Toronto biochemistry professor Larry Moran, commenting on my blog (quoted by Nature) that “Seriously, most of what passes for science journalism is so bad we will be better of without it…Science journalists have let us down. I say good riddance.” In other words, send them out into the cold.
The deepest problem here, in my mind, is moral: We lack the shared sense that people who cover science in the media—blogger, reporter, or otherwise—are part of the same team and need to be supported in bad times. We rarely take the time to look out for each other. We lack a sense of solidarity.
And now, many of our friends are going down alone.
Chris Mooney is contributing editor to Science Progress and author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”
Comments on this article
One issue Chris does not bring up, but which seems relevant, is getting access to sources. Scientists and their institutions are not, in general, the most warm and fuzzy types, willing to schmooze with just anyone about what they are up to (especially not if the work is controversial or dangerous). A science writer with the heft of the Washington Post or the New York Times behind him or her is far more likely to get the scoop than a blogger out their dangling on his or her own (even with a press pass from a relatively prestigious site like Discover’s). So even for those bloggers who ARE willing to report (as opposed to so many who simply repackage), the task is going to be more difficult and the public will lose.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:09 amWell said. I’m a writer–and although I blog, it can’t take the place of either the income I get from writing books or the work that I produce in doing so. Blogging is terrific, but by it’s nature, in its present form, it is complementary.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:39 pmNice post.
It’s a shame what Larry Moran is doing with his blog. You’re right. It’s like he’s attacking his own. It’s just kind of sad.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:30 pmBlogging isn’t a career for anybody? Someone be sure to tell the guys at Gizmodo and Engadget that they don’t have real jobs.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:09 pmNice post Chris! And congratulations to you and Sheril!
I agree, blogging is not a replacement for journalism and science bloggers might be journalists or they might not, just as they might be scientists or they might not.
Larry was most certainly out of place, but many of the scientists I know have a tendency to be myopic and quick to generalize about other people’s situations.
Personally, I don’t think many scientist bloggers are going to have the kind of time it takes to do serious investigative journalism. And that’s a sad state, since we need that sort of work now more than ever.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:49 pmI’m glad you wrote this, so don’t take the following as any sort of attack, just an attempt to add something to your already thoughtful post:
1) I think you’re wrong when you say blogging and science journalism have yet to fuse, or that the result (which is as much blogging or “news blogging” as anything else) has yet to turn into a career for anyone. Do you read the science coverage at Ars Technica? It’s a blog. And it has staff devoted solely to science.
Scientific American also employs one full-time blogger – Jordan Lite. There will be more — they just aren’t recognized as bloggers because they’re not allowed to talk about their cats in between talking about new discoveries.
2) Larry Moran is a bit of a straw man — holding him up as an exemplar of the opinion of the science blogosphere is taking an outlier and making it the mouthpiece for a heterogenous group of people. That said, he occasionally has a point.
3) When bloggers point out the mistakes of the MSM, they’re performing a service — even if their primary motivation appears to be the universal delight all humans take in being smug. It’s high time we figured out how to open up a dialogue so that those corrections can make it into our pieces, and so that experts in general can help us to be better journalists (like it or not, we’re the professional communicators tasked with getting their knowledge to the public, at least for now).
The goal is getting good information to the public, and ego has to be set aside if that’s to happen.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:59 amBy the way, didn’t mean to imply that Larry Moran had a point when he said that Science Journalists should all just hurry up and go extinct already (I’m paraphrasing) – that’s just mean.
I meant that in other cases, he and other bloggers point out actual mistakes in articles that appear in publications that you and I write for – that’s the point at which we should start building a dialogue. I mean, bloggers make mistakes all the time – unfortunately the convention of the strikeout and the “UPDATE” has yet to make it into news articles.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:03 amRick’s point is well-taken. I’ve certainly experienced this myself, as a former newspaper sci/med reporter now doing the mix of books, freelance journalism and blogging (http://drugresistantstaph.blogspot.com, and attempting to report as well as outpoint). Even to be able to say, “I’m calling for Million-Selling-Magazine X” lacks the automatic credibility of a newspaper name.
For science reporter-bloggers, this entrepreneurial patchwork that Chris describes comes with the additional challenge – always true for freelancers but more so now – of funding the necessary beat-background work that enables reporting as opposed to repackaging. It takes time to read deep into journals or go line-by-line through a budget. Science-media staff salaries used to pay for that time. The loss of staff jobs raises the question of who among the freelance corps will be able to afford to do that deep work.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:37 pmDo my teammates say that I’m a liar, part of a conspiracy, misrepresent what I say, ignore or downplay what the vast majority of people on my team have to say in favor of building up a tiny group of cranks, …? Do they mindlessly repeat lies about there being enormous job opportunities on my team, leading to massive unemployment and job destabilization for the people who pondered joining my team as opposed to some other good group? Is it teammates who run with slams on science and spread that far and wide (starting with, say, Proximire’s Golden Fleece awards) while soft-pedaling or ignoring the science? If that’s being done by my teammates, it becomes clearer why my team is in such trouble.
For my preference, I’d rather see a lot of good science reporting, and science journalists. I’d also rather see a lot of good science being done and reported. Journalists (science- or otherwise) these past 40 years have contributed to the job problems of scientists. It’s odd, then, to see a plea for scientists to save science journalists’ jobs. (Not least odd is that anyone thinks that scientists could do so! If what scientists thought mattered to media, science coverage would have been tremendously different for generations.)
You mention the faculty adjuncts, never destined for tenure and seem to think it a bad thing that science journalists now have similar problems. You know when there was an enormous increase in that as a way of life for scientists? Late 80s, when science journalists mindlessly ran ‘projections’ of a ‘looming shortage of scientists’. There was no such shortage, looming or otherwise. The definition of ’shortage’ used was 150% as many scientists as jobs. Even the most trivial of research would have revealed it. Instead, the reporters echoed the report, and there was a major increase in graduates. With, then, far more graduates than jobs, tenure-track positions all but disappeared, adjunct positions greatly expanded, post-docs went from an option to consider in my field (about 1/3rd took them in 1987) to heavy majority (2/3rds in 1989), and from one postdoc to a series of postdocs until either the person got lost (too long a gap in their postdoc treadmill), gave up, or, if extraordinarily fortunate, actually got a more or less stable job doing something that more or less resembled science. When things hit the rotating blades 1989-1995ish, what were science journalists doing? Reporting that there were whiny lazy science graduates and that (still) there was a ‘looming shortage’ of scientists.
A generation later, it’s science journalists’ turn. The newer crowd of science journalists has my sympathy, since I do know what that period was like for new would-be scientists.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:56 amGrumbine said:
Journalists (science- or otherwise) these past 40 years have contributed to the job problems of scientists.
Is there any piece of evidence to such a claim? On the contrary, numerous scientists have said over the years that, as young people, they’ve been encouraged to become scientists by reading or listening to good science on TV or in magazines.
By the way, Chris, good piece.
March 31st, 2009 at 1:18 amMy first impression of blogs was that they were a waste of everybody’s time. I was wrong.
Some of the blogs I once held in drastically low esteem have gradually progressed in quality — not so much quality on the side of the most knowing or expert contributors, but on the side of the less scientifically literate opinionated contributors.
Gradually a trickle down has occurred, it seems to me, such that if there remain many naive questions and unsupportable opinions and contentions, some of those refer — in however tiny increments — to allude to actual events and situations more often, and to choose opinions less on basis of totally wrong assertions of fact and less on basis of totally illogical attempts at rationalizing from those facts.
All humans (and scientists are most of them human)are insufficiently informed about nature, and less than absolutely objective in interpretation. Some of us are merely less hamstrung in having perfect knowledge, and perfectly rigorous thinking on the meaning of the roiling pool of ‘discovered’ facts at our cumulative disposal than are others.
No matter how the most astute and self-honest and most ‘reasonable’ among us may protest against it, we all have in common the necessity of muddling with less than a full deck of
fact cards, or a fully settled set of value judgments, or a fully perfected system of deciding which interpretation of facts ‘gets it right.’
What is blogging but a broad spectrum dialogue amongst the less ignorant and unreasonable with the more ignorant and unreasonable. None of us, no matter how highly regarded by ourselves or others, is above being wrong about some questions in science. And nothing stifles wisdom more, this old fart believes, at least, than smug, sanctimonious assurance that we who have the MOST empirically testable facts to play with are thereby licensed to have the last word on an assumption, or an interpretation about the meanings of data, even to the point of opinions about nature, human nature, what society should and should not do, and who should only shut up and listen to our
exalted take on things.
Blogs educate the educable at all levels of naivete or expertise. Valid questions sometime arise like pearls from the mouths of innocents.
I discern that there is a homeostasis of learning that takes place in a society in a way somewhat akin to that among the cells of a biological organism, where, if one cell does not understand what another is like, or what it is about, it nonetheless is rendered more capable of living in concert with the ‘community’ if it is somehow in touch with it.
No more is science capable of running the world optimally — in absence of interfacing with other organs of society than is a heart or a brain capable of living outside a body nor — given a body to function within — can it survive and contribute to the muddling of the rest without participating an an ongoing dialogue.
Such a dialogue is blogging. It crosses interdisciplinary boundaries within the sciences where — goodness knows — there is much ignorance by the left hand of what the right hand is doing. It crosses boundaries between the science professions and science academia, where, once again — goodness knows — some strange interpretations beyond the realm of any data have resolved may tend to be taught as grounded in fact. It crosses the boundaries between the data gatherer and the philosophically oriented, where questions of the meanings and significances and values of things cannot be firmly established but can be given the highest and best argumentations as to how they might be interpreted. And last, but not least, they cross the boundaries between the otherwise totally naive formers of opinion, where those opinions can serve (in a democratic society) to influence what the sciences and science professionals can, and cannot do… which can be beneficial to the whole of a society or downright obstructive of the very research and development of ideas and technology that could serve to provide solutions to major problems.
Okay, okay… I wax grandiloquent… but there is wisdom to be shared and cultivated and grown by the kind of great dialogue which, in this old fart’s respectful opinion, is provided by
the mechanism of blogging.
In a very real sense, sharing of scientific ideas and issues and opinions has a potential to raise a society to a higher level of wisdom — even as it may knock a few bigots off their self-styled pedestals, when they get carried away with their own academic or professional accolades and forget that they can be mistaken in extracting ideas too far beyond tight esoteric circles and supposing them to be what is best for everyone.
Blogging circulates more freely the life’s blood of learning, both top down and bottom up in a society.
It’s one of the best phenomena that has come along in ages.
So there. You’ve gained the benefits of this olf fart’s opinion. If it has merit, learn from it. If not, it conveys information about one way of looking at the question raised
March 31st, 2009 at 5:51 pm(:>)
Pascal: It’s a very odd response you give. Even if you were right on the job issues, your solution of journalists encouraging people in to science (even if true) is non sequitur.
On the jobs sides, lazy journalism contributed to the great oversupply of scientists in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Too many applicants meant dropping wages, dropping opportunities, longer apprenticeships, and so on.
More current is that bad journalism of the ’some say this, some say that’ school has contributed substantially to the problems detailed by Chris in The Republican War on Science. Had the reporting noted that the ’some’ who denied climate change, value of vaccines, theory of evolution, … were not scientists and were a small minority, while the ones who saw the value in each were actually scientists, and were studying the issues, we wouldn’t be where we are. Where we are is that people trying to teach the overwhelming consensus understanding on those topics have their jobs threatened, funding reduced (see the EOS program in the 1990s, for ex.), and quite a lot more grief in non-professional situations (including the death threat I received) because the journalists involved presented the science and anti-science positions as if choosing the science position was purely a matter of preference rather than evidence.
Your non sequitur is interesting on its own.
Do people become scientists because of science journalists? You say, minus even any anecdotes, yes. I am a scientist. How we got in to the area is a common topic of conversation at meetings. Among written sources of science interest, the overwhelming majority is science fiction — both short stories and novels. For written non-fiction, the overwhelming majority is science books (not magazines), and most of those being science books written by scientists (Asimov, Gamow, Gould, Sagan, Wilson, …). Next, and occupying a small minority, would be magazines like Scientific American and Discover — which are also notable for routinely having their science articles written by scientists. The magazines usually, however, follow an interest in science, not lead it. It’s the other sources that produced the interest. At best, the magazines can nurture an interest that already exists.
The news is no better in the visual field. The overwhelming majority is science fiction (again) movies and TV shows. Next is science non-fiction shows like Nova, National Geographic, and such. Maybe in this latter case journalists get involved. I’m not sure. I am sure that the credits listing in such shows a goodly number of scientists as actively involved. If the topic is near my work, I typically know personally at least 1/3rd of the scientists credited. Then there’s one of the most successful series of all time on science — Cosmos, written by and starring a scientist. (Carl Sagan)
Journalists are really pretty irrelevant to this target, a point it looks like the journalists who award the Pulitzer prize for non-fiction books (the only category science can show up in) are inclined towards themselves. Of 9 books in that category (that I recognized, as listed by Wikipedia), I make 6 as being by scientists rather than journalists. I commented about this over at initforthegold earlier today. The 9 are:
Journalists writing on science:
Richard Rhodes
Tracy Kidder
John McPhee
Scientists writing on science
Carl Sagan
E. O. Wilson (twice)
Douglas Hofstader
Jonathan Weiner
Jared Diamond
I’ve probably missed some, and chances are that I’ve missed more journalists than scientists. Still, there are at least 6 books by scientists on that list. That’s amazing, considering that the judges aren’t scientists, in fact are journalists and may not know anything about science to speak of. Perhaps you can finish off the list with careful examination of all the awardees. Note, however, that I’ve already been liberal — Kidder’s book was about engineering rather than science.
What’s especially striking here is that the category is for writing towards the general public, not for professional audiences. Scientists get jobs and promotions for writing to professional audiences, not general public. It is journalists whose entire job is to be writing for the general public. And they lose at this extremely elevated level to amateurs.
Science journalism is important, I think. But if your contention is that science journalists are on the same ‘team’ as scientists, you (and Chris) need to produce some evidence for that. As best I’ve seen, journalists are on the team of producing more revenue for their media outlet. That’s a rather different team than trying to understand more about the universe. And if your contention is that science journalism is important because that’s how future scientists get interested, you need to produce a lot of evidence since I have extensive first and second-hand knowledge from scientists that this isn’t so.
Where science journalism is important, I think, is in the realm of contributing to an informed society that can make informed decisions. The lousy reportage of the last 20 years that contributed to what Chris wrote about in Republican War on Science is not contributing to an informed society.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 pmSays Robert Grumbine: “As best I’ve seen, journalists are on the team of producing more revenue for their media outlet. That’s a rather different team than trying to understand more about the universe”. Now that’s news. Greedy old journalists unable to understand the pristine word of enlightened and pure scientists decoding the universe. Come on. There’s many shades of gray in this life, and neither all journalists are that bad nor all scientists are that good. Then again, I’m just a journalist and can’t provide factual data to back my assert, so I guess I cant’ be believed. Sigh.
April 6th, 2009 at 4:23 amGreedy is your word, not mine Horacio. Pristine is your word, not mine. Enlightened and pure are your words, not mine. And good and bad are your words, not mine. Whatever it is you’re upset about, it doesn’t seem to be what I was actually writing.
The request for factual data originated from another journalist (Lapointe). Struck me as reasonable in principle, though odd coming from someone who provided no factual data himself.
By that journalist’s standard, no, you can’t be believed. If you disagree, take it up with Pascal, who set the standard, not me. And take up your other complaints about greed, etc., with someone who actually talked about it.
April 6th, 2009 at 3:26 pmI just felt I needed to stop in and mention how-do-you-do to everyone. I desired to introduce myself, my name is Chris.
I decided to post now because I feel this place as a whole is very functional and social place. I love looking at all of the topics and topics here and considering that I am not much of a poster, I came to the conclusion to make my very first thread.
I recently created my very first website and felt the need to share it with all and get some constructive feedback.
The site is http://computerrepair101.wetpaint.com – computer repair
August 12th, 2009 at 8:01 amDidn’t you know about new flu revelations? It’s something strange for me, but it seems to be quiet these days.
But anyway, we have the best fle vaccine – enter
http://www.trainingpeaks.com/bbs-forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=52420&posts=1
GOOGLE says many interesting things about it!
September 18th, 2009 at 7:12 pmבוקר טוב
חיפשתי תגבור לילדים שלי לבגרויות
הבעיה הייתה למצוא משהו שמתאים לתלמידת חטיבת ביניים
לקח לי המון זמן למצוא משהו איכותי, אחרי הרבה בירורים מצאתי את הדבר המושלם. הקורס הזה עולה לחודש פחות ממה שאני משלם למורה פרטית לשיעור אחד והוא מאפשר לילד ללמוד כמה שהוא רוצה! כבר עלינו מ65 ל80 !
שווה לנסות! אנגלית חינם
October 10th, 2009 at 12:09 pm