Boing Boing's science editor Maggie Koerth-Baker speaks to CU Science Update
By Beth Bartel
As newsrooms downsize they tend to cut specialty journalists, like science reporters, from their staff or shrink science sections. At the end of 2008, for example, CNN cut its entire science, technology and environment team. A few months later, The Boston Globe eliminated its Health/Science section, although the staff stayed on and the paper began running science content in its “g” lifestyle tabloid and the business section.
Cutting science journalists can mean that the work of science reporting is left to journalists who may have little exposure to, and understanding of, how science works, and also means that less science news makes it into traditional media outlets. This can lead to the public getting inaccurate or misleading reports from standard news sources, and getting less exposure to science news in general.
Enter another way to communicate science: Boing Boing, a blog that, in addition to covering technology, art and futurism, has a dedicated science section.
In this CU Science Update video podcast (vodcast, if you will) Ted Burnham speaks to Maggie Koerth-Baker, Boing Boing’s science editor.
Koerth-Baker discusses why blogs are good for reporting science, her role at Boing Boing, how Boing Boing covered the March 11 Tōhoku earthquake, and subsequent nuclear fiasco, and our world’s energy future.
The vodcast forms part of a series of interviews with participants at CU’s annual Conference on World Affairs, which happened in April this year. Running time is 21:49. If you want to skip the introduction and get right to the interview, start at 04:30.
We’ll be featuring more CU Science Update vodcasts in future. The Emmy Award-winning show is the brainchild of CU journalism instructor Paul Daugherty.
