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Friday, May 01, 2009

Media: Crisis in science media?

I received this press release from NOVA:
Please check your local listings as show times and dates may vary.

NOVA's Senior Science Editor speaks at symposium

In conjunction with the Cambridge Science Festival, NOVA's Senior Science Editor Evan Hadingham spoke at the MIT museum on Tuesday night as part of a symposium on the future of science journalism. Evan joined New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson, NYT Environmental Reporter Andrew Revkin, Scientific American Managing Editor Ivan Oransky, and Director of MIT's Knight Science Journalism Fellowships Phil Hilts. The panelists discussed the rapid growth of new media, the 24/7 news cycle, and how declining resources have provoked a crisis in the traditional print and electronic news media, raising questions about the future of high quality journalism. They also touched on the challenges and opportunities ahead in multimedia coverage and specialized reporting of science, health, the environment and technology.
All I can say is:

Hey, wakey, wakey. Freelancers have been soldiering through these problems for years.

There never was much "high quality journalism" on far too much of much of the science beat. Much of it was "[Darwinian] Evolution explains on Valentine's Day why you 'cheatie on your sweetie!'" - and a virtual Niagara Falls of similar nonsense.

Obviously, I grieve when people lose their jobs (what decent person wouldn't?), but if that stuff just disappeared, the world would not really be worse off.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

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