Jordan Wirfs-Brock's Library tagged "geoff brumfiel" →  View Popular, Search in Google

I finally started digging into Nature's special issue on the future of science journalism. The most interesting passage thus far (and the one that also rings most true to me, as a former-would-be-scientist/current-aspiring-journalist/lifetime-reader-of-science):

"But there is a problem: the online world, both in its bloggier reaches and elsewhere, is polarized; people go to places they feel comfortable. Many of the people that Timmer originally hoped to reach when writing about intelligent design and the Dover trial probably go elsewhere for their news, he says, because 'it's easy for somebody to pick their news sources based on their politics, and get that version of scientific issues'. Dykstra worries that in a more fragmented media world, 'environmental news will be available to environmentalists and science news will be available to scientists. Few beyond that will pay attention.'

"Others worry about the less questioning approach that comes with a stress on communication rather than journalism. 'Science is like any other enterprise,' says Blum. 'It's human, it's flawed, it's filled with politics and ego. You need journalists, theoretically, to check those kinds of things,' she says. In the United States, at least, the newspaper, the traditional home of investigations and critical reporting, is on its way out, says Hotz. 'What we need is to invent new sources of independently certified fact.'"

science journalism nature media blogging geoff brumfiel