How to Save the News by James Fallows

IN FOCUS: The evolution of a science story


This week, British newspaper The Guardian, has decided to try a new way of reporting science stories. Instead of publishing a single story on a discovery and then moving on to the next one, they are tracking how a science story evolves over time.

The story in question is a paper published this week in the journal Nature, which has been published in full online: "Functional impact of global rare copy number variation in autism spectrum disorders". (For those of you wondering what on Earth the Nature title may be hinting at, the news article was titled "DNA sweep reveals new autism genes" at Cosmos Online)

This new idea for reporting science came after Krishna Bharat, the man who guides Google News, told The Atlantic this week that what astonished him most about the news business was the predictable and pack-like response of most of the world's news outlets to most stories.

It's as true for science stories as it is for politics, sport and business. The weekly studies published in the two major scientific journals, Nature and Science, are covered by hundreds - if not thousands - of media outlets around the world.

Yet very few science news stories cater to the people usually uninterested in science, and very few cater to the people highly knowledgeable in science. Where would you go for more information if you fit into either of these categories?

Check out the story tracker at The Guardian, and if you love it or hate it, let us know.

Jacqui Hayes
Online Editor, Cosmos Magazine



At The Atlantic.com

"Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content—the list of what’s killing journalism is long. But high on that list, many would say, is Google, the biggest unbundler of them all. Now, having helped break the news business, the company wants to fix it—for commercial as well as civic reasons: if news organizations stop producing great journalism, says one Google executive, the search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to. So some of the smartest minds at the company are thinking about this, and working with publishers, and peering ahead to see what the future of journalism looks like. Guess what? It’s bright."