Boston Globe cuts science coverage
Angela Saini
Thursday, 12 March 2009 17:54 UTC
I don’t know if anyone else on this forum noticed, but the Boston Globe has just become the latest casualty in the ongoing bloodbath that is seeing science disappear from our TV and newspapers (the other most recent victim was CNN). It has shunted its coverage from the main paper to other sections, including business… yes, business.
On my blog recently, someone suggested we set up a campaign to save science journalism before we have to get all our news from the back of cereal packets or, God forbid, Twitter. Anyone with me?
First item on the agenda: how do we save science journalism?
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Replies
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I put in my two-cents worth on my blog, saying that one possible way to save science journalism is to turn it into a nonprofit, public-service enterprise, funded by philanthropy or some other source.
What a coincidence. Nature this week has a great feature about the decline of science journalism. It ends by discussing two websites, Yale Environment 360 and Climate Central that put out articles about science. They are funded by foundations/nonprofits, run out of universities and edited by science writers. Could this be the future of science journalism?
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That’s a really good plan. In the UK The Guardian is very successfully run by the independent Scott Trust, and lots of small media enterprises get public funding. The Wellcome Trust supports science media projects, for example.
One concern I would have about running science writing/broadcasting out of universities is that journalists may lose the ability to be critical and investigative.
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@Angela: I think you hit w weak, maybe the weakest, point of this plan. Critical abilities and indipendance are two of the most important characteristics of the good journalism (scientific or not). I don’t know how the future scientific journalism will be, but I’m quite sure we need it. The Guardian is in a good shape, expecially if you compare it with other newspapers. The problem of the public support is: what happen when there are no public investors? Should the government supporto scientific, political, artistical, musical, gardening journalism?
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Seems like this fact doesn’t capture so much interest in the forum…
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The governments seem to be asked to support so many things these days. I have a feeling that science reporting would come very low on their list of essentials at the moment. Also a government-funded unit might be biassed in favour of government policies.
This is very difficult, isn’t it? We need science journalists, and we need journalists in general, but how are we going to continue to have them if the newspapers are losing ground against the web?
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This is too depressing… It sounds like the only person who can save newspaper science journalism is some kind of unbiased, super-rich, philanthropic hero. But even then, fewer people are reading newspapers…
In my opinion, newspapers don’t help their case when they rely on press releases and force journalists to work so hard that they don’t have time to find original stories. I know costs are being cut, but I would buy magazines or newspapers if they had fewer, more original and investigative stories. Has anyone read Flat Earth News? It calls for exactly that.
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Hello from Montreal,
I’ve saw a few days ago that a US Senator of yours was proposing a bill to transform newspapers in not-for-profit enterprises. If done, that would be the helping hand a lot of newspapers need right now.Your proposal to transform science journalism in a not-for-profit enterprise is good, but I see a problem: let’s imagine that Harvard creates such an initiative. Let’s imagine this initiative takes the form of a science news website. Then, a few thousands of the Boston Globe readers who do not have anymore their science news, will migrate on this website, but 95% of the Globe readers will never hear of it, or will be intimidated, or will forget about it… In short, the loss of science journalism in the Globe will indeed be a loss for society.
In the last few years, I have frequently told myself that maybe this was unavoidable; maybe science newspaper journalism is approaching the end of its few-decades-history, and maybe we’ve entered the era of the two solitudes: one news business, like this hypothetical Harvard-science-news-newspaper, for the few ones who can afford it, or even pay for it, and the other news business, for the masses. What can we do to avoid this future, that is the question.
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I don’t see how you can “transform newspapers into not for profit enterprises” by legislation? Most of them are commercial businesses.
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@Maxine: of course you are right, I was not precise enough. What this Senator is proposing is a legislation to enable newspapers to establish themselves as tax-exempt nonprofits.
That could be a good idea, in an ideal world, but I imagine a lot of owners will close shop, and take their money back, rather than transform themselves in altruistic not-for-profit owners.
But, from a science writer point-of-view, that would be a very nice way to save what can be saved of science news in newspapers.
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