Our favorite science news stories of 2021 (non–COVID-19 edition)

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
News Stories ◽  
Science News

scholarly journals From journal to headline: the accuracy of climate science news in Danish high quality newspapers

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (02) ◽  
pp. A03 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunver Lystbæk Vestergård
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science News ◽  
Preliminary Study

A significant number of mass media news stories on climate change quote scientific publications. However, the journalistic process of popularizing scientific research regarding climate change has been profoundly criticized for being manipulative and inaccurate. This preliminary study used content analysis to examine the accuracy of Danish high quality newspapers in quoting scientific publications from 1997 to 2009. Out of 88 articles, 46 contained inaccuracies though the majority was found to be insignificant and random. The study concludes that Danish broadsheet newspapers are ‘moderately inaccurate’ in quoting science publications but are not deliberately hyping scientific claims. However, the study also shows that 11% contained confusion of source, meaning that statements originating from press material or other news outlets were incorrectly credited to scientific peer-reviewed publications.

Deadline Writing

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Cook
Keyword(s):  
Journal Article ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
Science Writing ◽  
Breaking News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science Story ◽  
Science News ◽  
Trade Center ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

The moment I walked into the newsroom, I could tell that something was wrong. A group of editors were huddled around the city desk, talking. The televisions were on. People didn't just look tense; they looked genuinely worried. As I walked over to my desk, I saw the image of a burning building. It was the World Trade Center. I was standing there when the second tower fell. I had the same thought that I'm sure a lot of people had: How could this be happening? But I'm also a newspaper reporter, and I realized that there was a science story to be done: Why did the towers fall? Six or seven hours later, I needed to have a finished story that answered that question. It is hard enough to successfully translate the arcane jargon of science into a story for the general reader. A ticking clock makes it that much more difficult—the words “exciting” and “terrifying” come to mind. For a science reporter, this type of breaking news situation doesn't happen very often. One of the great surprises when I moved to science writing a few years ago was that many of the news stories that appear in daily papers were not, in fact, written on deadline. I used to be in awe that someone had the ability to boil down some complex journal article on human origins or supernovas, reach all the important people, and write a clear, elegant article in a day. Many of the big journals, of course, operate on an embargo system, in which reporters are given advance copies and allowed to report ahead of time on the understanding that they won't publish a story until the journal appears in print. But there are still times when science news must be delivered on a daily deadline, either because news breaks or because you have a scoop you don't want to lose. In these cases, I think that everyone who does this for a living develops his own set of tools for coping. Success requires a ruthless attention to where you are in the process, where you are in the day, and what you still need.

Our favorite science news stories of 2017

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Grimm
Keyword(s):  
News Stories ◽  
Science News

From the editor: The top 10 science news stories since time began

Science News ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 177 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-2
Author(s):  
Tom Siegfried
Keyword(s):  
News Stories ◽  
Science News

The top 10 science news stories of 2015

Science ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Grimm
Keyword(s):  
News Stories ◽  
Science News

The Press Grew More Interpretive

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin G. Barnhurst
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Radio ◽  
Network Television ◽  
News Content ◽  
News Stories ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Press ◽  
Science News ◽  
The Right ◽  
Interpretive Turn

This chapter discusses the growing pressure for news to become more interpretive. The Left worries about commercial and public relations influences, and the Right about reporters' biases, but both sides call for news that gives more context. They say the press should also do a better job of explaining where information comes from. News content producers want to supply more and better interpretations and have called for more context that “makes the complex coherent and meaningful,” decried a growing tendency of science news reports to manipulate facts, and warned against surrendering “their functions of analysis and explanation”. A closer look at news stories shows a broad interpretive turn toward modern news, with explanations along with judgments and opinions increasing in the news content of daily papers, network television, public radio, and mainstream sites online.

Retailing science: genre hybridization in online science news stories

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiqiong Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Press Releases ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
News Production ◽  
University Websites ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science Discourse ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Science News ◽  
Science Rhetoric ◽  
Promotional Discourse

AbstractThis study explores how marketing and science rhetoric have become entrenched in online science news stories. The schematic structures of a corpus of 270 news stories from three types of website (university websites, the websites of Futurity.org and MSNBC.com) have been analyzed and compared. An eight-move structure identified from the corpus suggests that the genre of news stories is a hybridization of promotional discourse for marketization and science discourse for explanation. Hybridization is first evident in university press releases, which are then spread by the mass media without significant changes. From the perspective of intertextual chains, the emerging discourse practices can be attributed to the power shifting of news production from journalists to science institutions and further from journalistic to scientific norms. In turn, the discourse practices accelerate the shift of power, which could ultimately lead to the loss of independent and critical science journalism.

Our favorite science news stories of 2019

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Grimm
Keyword(s):  
News Stories ◽  
Science News

scholarly journals Can scientists fill the science journalism void? Online public engagement with science stories authored by scientists

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Barel-Ben David ◽  
Erez S. Garty ◽  
Ayelet Baram-Tsabari
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science Story ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Science Stories ◽  
Science News

AbstractIn many countries the public’s main source of information about science and technology is the mass media. Unfortunately, in recent years traditional journalism has experienced a collapse, and science journalism has been a major casualty. One potential remedy is to encourage scientists to write for news media about science. On these general news platforms, scientists’ stories would have to compete for attention with other news stories on hard (e.g. politics) and entertaining (e.g. celebrity news) topics written by professional writers. Do they stand a chance?This study aimed to quantitatively characterize audience interactions as an indicator of interest in science news stories authored by early career scientists (henceforth ‘scientists’) trained to function as science reporters, as compared to news items written by reporters and published in the same news outlets.To measure users’ behavior, we collected data on the number of clicks, likes, comments and average time spent on page. The sample was composed of 150 science items written by 50 scientists trained to contribute popular science stories in the Davidson Institute of Science Education reporters’ program and published on two major Israeli news websites - Mako and Ynet between July 2015 to January 2018. Each science item was paired with another item written by the website’s organic reporter, and published on the same channel as the science story (e.g., tourism, health) and the same close time. Overall significant differences were not found in the public’s engagement with the different items. Although, on one website there was a significant difference on two out of four engagement types, the second website did not have any difference, e.g., people did not click, like or comment more on items written by organic reporters than on the stories written by scientists. This creates an optimistic starting point for filling the science news void by scientists as science reporters.

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