Professional science writing

Spending an hour with Tom has inspired me to want to talk about good sources of professional science journalism.  Tom mentioned that with a large number of journalists being laid off in recent years, especially many on the science beat, the science journalism scene has become highly fragmented.  You have found some great blogs out there, many written by scientists themselves.  But what are the good sources for professional writing.  This will be a topic for this week's class.

So here is your assignment for Wednesday:

1. Be ready to discuss what you liked and/or did not like about Tom Hayden's articles.  Did you prefer the straight textual pieces, or the multimedia pieces?
2. Try to find sources for professional science stories on the web, in whatever media type you like.  Text, videos, audio, whatever.  Be ready to talk about what you did and did not like in class. Where to start?  How about major newspapers, news weeklies, National Public Radio, the BBC, etc.
3. Read chapter 3 in Randy Olson's book - Don't Be Such a Poor Storyteller.
4. Write at least one more post for your blog.  Any topic you want related to science.  If you have not done so already, check out the other posts from class and think about what you think works well, and what does not.  And keep Randy and Tom's suggestions in mind.
5. And lastly, leave at least one comment on a post from one of the class blogs.