22 July 1998

    Date: 22 Jul 1998 07:45:46
    From: johnpike@fas.org
    Subject: What's Wrong With the New York Times's Science Reporting
    To: Recipients of conference <fastnet@igc.apc.org>

    At 11:11 AM 7/6/1998, resclove@amherst.edu wrote:

    >"What's Wrong With the New York Times's Science Reporting?"

    Whatever the bad news, at least the good news is
    that there is Science Times reporting to complain
    about. Warts and all, the NYT seems to do more
    science reporting than any other half dozen papers
    put together. I will confess, however, that over time
    my interest in their reporting has declined, though
    not due to the issues cited in the Nation critique.

    The part that I have the problem with is not the slant
    of their science and public policy reporting, but rather
    with the declining proportion of their science reporting
    that has a public policy component ..... just check out
    any recent Tuesday, and see how few of the articles
    are "important" from either a science or a policy
    perspective, versus how many are a midly amusing
    read over a second cup of coffee before work. To me
    demographics is the problem... their market research
    is driving their editorial content

    > the NY Times' routine science
    >coverage is almost entirely of the "gee whiz!" variety,

    This is generically true: the science beat is just flat
    out the only beat on which there is only good news.
    Check out sports, business, weather, obits, entertainment
    reviews, whatever, in every other section of the paper
    good news is always defined in contrast to bad news,
    both of which get reported. Even the bad reporting
    of science policy has two sides, even if one doesn't
    like how they are presented.

    But in science there is only good news. Try selling a
    paper in which it never rains or all teams win or all
    businesses make buckets of money and no one ever
    gets fired and see how many copies you sell. But
    science is different, if not all the time at least far
    too often it seems that too many science reporters
    [generally not including the Science Times folks]
    seem to approach science reporting as happy news.

    There has been a rather substantial shift in the NYT
    coverage of this stuff and it is driven by the prevailing
    desparation to attract younger readers who the believe
    want happy news and soft features etc

    I say this without any particular insight into the specifics
    @NYT.com, but this is surely true with newspapers
    generally, and has powerful explanatory power of the
    evolution of the Science Times, even if the inside scoop
    is much more convoluted.

    Frankly, however, it is also the case that there just doesn't
    seem to be much heavy furniture being moved around
    on the science policy front generally these days, at least
    compared with five or ten years ago when there were
    major public policy issues that were hotly contested.
    The news media can report news, they can shape news,
    but there are limits to their ability to make news.......
    though I wish they would try

    @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
    John Pike				http://www.fas.org/
    Federation of American Scientists		202-675-1023
    307 Massachusetts Ave NE		Washington, DC 20002
    "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion"