Category: Grad School

Where To Find A Good Article

Grad School, My Personal Life,

My apologies for a lack of blog posting this weekend. It seems as though Wisconsin has conspired against me and I contracted some type of food poisoning, thus I have not been out of my apartment in the last 48 hours. But, I’m doing much better now and so I have the joy of conquering my stack of homework for this week.

In addition to my typical reading, homework for this week also includes coming up with a story idea, contacting at least three sources, and writing up a 800+ word article. I really need to get a jump on it, so I’ve spent today getting the reading out of the way and hopefully will be able to focus on the article tomorrow and Tuesday.

This article is intended to be short news, which I am very comfortable with since that was the bulk of my duty at BioTechniques, but it has one component that makes it more difficult. The three sources in the article have to represent three different points of view, which can be difficult in a breaking science story. So, that makes choosing the topic that much more important, it has to be something very specific but that has a more general impact so that there will be more people to interview than just the bench scientists.

That being said, Marianne and I were just discussing how to find article ideas. I find press releases to be the best way to find science stories, because they can help show you stories that are important, but that occur at Universities or even in countries that are far away from where the reporter is physically located. Press releases also focus on new information, so that almost always leads to an element of timeliness, which is crucial to a breaking news story.

Although, just reading the science news from other media outlets can help inspire a story, or talking to researchers and seeing what they think are important trends in their community. I’ll let you know what I decide to write about, fingers crossed a good press release won’t be hard to find.

Book Review: The Elements of Journalism

Book Review, Good Writing, Grad School

151522For my J800 class I was assigned to read Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel’s The Elements of Journalism – What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect. I finished it in two days, it was a quick read, but an important one. Just in these first few days of classes, I’ve been reminded how important it is for the public to build a relationship with a journalist based on transparency and verification of information. If no one trusts what you say, you can’t be a journalist. Its that simple.

So what are the “Elements of Journalism?”
(Taken directly out of the book)

1. The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.
2. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
3. Journalism’s first loyalty is to citizens.
4. The essence of journalism is a discipline of verification.
5. Journalists must maintain an independence from those they cover.
6. Journalists must serve as an independent monitor of power.
7. Journalism must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
8. Journalists must make the significant interesting and relevant.
9. Journalists should keep the news comprehensive and in proportion.
10. Journalists have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.

Things to think about as I start to settle into my chosen profession…

My 19th First Day of School

Grad School

Counting Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, Undergrad, and now Grad School, today marked my 19th first day of school. I always love the first day of school, I find it exciting and for the most part teachers and professors are in a pretty good mood because they haven’t yet had to deal with students or grade papers.

I had two of my four classes today. The first, literary aspects of journalism – taught by Deborah Blum (a working journalist and science writer whose latest book is The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Science in Jazz Age New York). The course is going to explore journalism as an art form, with an emphasis on story telling. I’m really excited about it, because while I’m pretty confident in my ability to write short news, I’d really like to develop my skill at writing feature stories.

We’re going to be reading a lot in Blum’s class but two books that I’m particularly excited to read are Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (I’ve fallen asleep during the movie starring Johnny Depp at least four times, but I am hopeful that the book will do far more for me), and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. UW-Madison’s Go Big Read initiative is featuring Skloot’s book so she’s going to be coming to campus this semester to give a large lecture at the Kohl Center, and a smaller lecture at the Journalism School. I’m excited about this book because my last article for BioTechniques before ending my internship was on cell line contamination, and was picked up by Skloot on her Twitter page. It was thrilling, so I am really looking forward to hearing another science writer, especially one so successful, speak.

The other class I had today was International Communication with Jo Ellen Fair. The class is focused on “Celebrity Culture, the Media, and International Humanitarian Interventions.” I think focusing on the role celebrities play in generating interest about humanitarian issue will be a really interesting way to look at international reporting.

So far it looks like this is going to be a great semester, I really liked being back in class and I felt comfortable being back in the college atmosphere. I have one class tomorrow that is just a lecture with no work attached to it and then the three day weekend before seriously starting course work next week, I’m pretty excited about it.

Good Thing I Didn’t Choose Colorado

Grad School, State of Journalism,

When I was narrowing down programs and trying to choose which Grad School I wanted to attend I was split between the University of Wisconsin Madison and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Michigan State’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism was a big draw, but I didn’t get the acceptance letter until just days before I had to make a decision, making a visit to the school impossible, so that pretty much counted them out. I chose UW because I loved Madison, and I felt like I would fit into the community much better than I would in Colorado.

As it turns out, its a good thing I chose UW instead of Colorado because CU Boulder is closing their Journalism school. It would have been incredibly unfortunate to be stuck there with the program completely restructuring. Most likely, I would have ended up with a graduate degree in something that didn’t reflect my actual interests and job goals (probably information studies or multi media something or another.) I guess I dodged the proverbial bullet on that one.

Thanks to my Mom for this interesting article on the closing and how journalism, despite the massive loss of revenue in recent years, is expanding at an enormous rate due to the rise of new technologies. Universities need to find a way to fit the ever changing role of journalism into their programs.

One quote from the article that I just want to highlight is from David Hazinski an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Journalism and Mass Communication program. Essentially he’s explaining why journalists still have a role to play in a society that has been bombarded by instant opinion and commentary through blogs, twitter, etc. People trained in the technology are not the same as people who are trained in telling the story.

“Journalism isn’t hardware. It is content and context. Someone is still going to have to go to that fire and shoot some video, interview the mayor, and analyze that stock report. Someone is still going to have to package it, if for no other reason than to save audiences time. Writing, interviewing, editing, and working under pressure will still be needed skills. Ethics and standards will become even more important as the sea of opinion grows deeper. The content and context will be distributed over many platforms but someone has to be at the top of the information food chain. Those people will be skilled journalists, not technicians.”

Wisconsin & Writing

Grad School, Past Articles

Today I ran a bunch of errands around the UW Campus. I got my student ID, got my bus pass, set up a bank account, got groceries, found my classes etc. According to my Mom my ID picture makes me look homeless. I guess its a winner. Today was my family’s last full day here, they leave for the airport tomorrow at 4pm. I’m really glad they came out here to help me get settled but I think it will be good for me to just wander around a little by myself to get my bearings.

Tomorrow my article on genome wide association studies and technologies for finding rare variants is due for BioTechniques. I’m still waiting on one last interview, so fingers crossed that will come through tomorrow morning. Otherwise, I’m not sure what I’ll do, quote from papers probably. I did get four other interviews so its not terrible, but they asked for five so I’d really like to deliver. Its not my best work, but given that I only had two weeks, and that I moved and have been with my family non-stop for one week of that I’m proud of myself for the progress I’ve made.

In other science writing news, Harvard recently found Marc Hauser guilty of misconduct. I mentioned in an earlier post that the New York Times had reported on the alleged misconduct. I thought their reporting on the case was relatively balanced, so I figured it was worth mentioning.