I’ve been told that I’m bad at telling people what I’m up to, so allow me to indulge in a little bit of self promotion for un momentito.

The past few weeks have been crazy. In a good way, of course. So here’s a recap.

1. We launched the preview site for Science Studio!

Oh lordy lordy people. This project is sort of my baby, so it’s going first. On Wednesday we launched the preview site of Science Studio – a collection of the best science multimedia on the web. To show people what the site is like Ben, Bora and I went through and picked a bunch of videos and audio pieces that aren’t eligible for this years collection. You should totally go look at those, but more importantly, you should think of your favorite internet things from this year and nominate them at our nomination form.

2. Nautilus, a new digital magazine, launched to much fanfare.

Nautilus is pretty classy looking, eh? Our first issue What Makes You So Special is an exploration of humanity, our place in the universe, and why we think we’re unique amongst the millions of other things out there. The New York Times actually covered our launch, with a story that has a really splendid kicker.

Check out the first issue here, and the blog here. Also visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

3. TED-Ed has been pretty busy too. We turned one, won three Webbys AND were named to TIME’s list of 50 Best Websites (yes apparently that’s a thing, no we didn’t know it was a thing until just now either).

In case you’re not familiar with what TED-Ed does, we create little animated lessons that cover everything from the art of metaphor, to the crazy history of the cell theory, to how chemotherapy works. Here’s a recent excellent example:

4. Minute Earth broke 3 million video views. That’s a lot of views, people! Maybe you’ll be our three million, two hundred thousandth, forty seventh view? Eh? Eh?

5. I gave a talk at Nerd Nite and it didn’t go horribly! I was so nervous I actually almost threw up, but you know, I didn’t, so there’s that. Here I am, on stage! (I’m the one on the left).

6. I finally booked my travel to Helsinki for the World Conference of Science Journalists, where I’m moderating a panel on the future of science journalism. As a part of that, we’ve been doing bimonthly social media chats about various questions that come up when the future of journalism is batted around. If you’ve missed any of those, you can see my recaps here. 

ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNET

Here are some things that I’m stoked about that happened on the internet recently.

1. Arikia Millikan launched Lady Bits – a place for smart women to make smart journalism. Because you know what the world doesn’t need? More magazines for dudes by dudes. Check it out at Medium, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

2. Story Collider is having their three year anniversary this week! Three years of true stories about how science has effected people’s lives. I get to edit their podcast, which is super fun, but it’s really Erin Barker and Ben Lillie who make this show as awesome as it is.

3. The amazing Emma Bryce has a blog at The Guardian! It’s all about food, and I love food, and you probably do too, so you should go read it right about now.

Image: Bernard Bujold

Last week was sort of a nightmare for everyone. Between the Boston marathon bombings and ensuing man-hunt, the explosion at the fertilizer plant in Texas, the earthquakes in China and Iran, the bombs in Baghdad, and whatever else I’m missing. Oh, did I mention the elvis impersonator who mailed ricin to the president? Yeah, that happened too, and nobody paid attention because we were all too busy wondering what had happened to the world. It was that kind of week.

Really, though, all the attention here in the United States was on Boston. The coverage was messy, and I don’t want to go into that. There are lots of smart people already thinking about how journalists went wrong (and right) when covering the actual events as they happened. What I want to talk about is how science journalists deal with this sort of a news event – one that is not a science story unless we make it one.

What are our obligations as science journalists when Boston happens? When Aurora happens? When Newtown happens? Do we have to cover it? And if we do, how do we do it right? We’re all going to have different opinions on this, so here are some thoughts from the #sci4hels panelists (and Bora, who we’ll call the founder of the panel). Here’s what we think.

Lena Groeger (news-apps developer at ProPublica, in case you forgot) had this to say:

The question of breaking news for science journalism is not so different from the rest of journalism. I think both can be broken down into two components:

1. Content: what you write about.

After the events in Boston, a senior editor gave us the following words of advice: “Play to your strengths.” That is, if you have a lot of good background information or insight you can add to the situation, you should definitely share it. If you know something other people don’t know (or are getting wrong), if you can add context or reveal patterns, if you can provide an overlooked angle or commentary, then you should do something. For example, one of ProPublica’s environmental reporters had been following BP for a long time before the oil spill. He was able to recognize that this wasn’t the first time BP had made a mistakes, and was able therefore to give a historical angle on a current news event.

On the other hand, don’t publish something just because everyone else is, because you need to take advantage of the traffic, or because you feel like you “should.” Especially in the whirlwind of misinformation during an ongoing breaking news story that is very much in flux, your attempt to add something may, in fact, rest on wrong information. Don’t put yourself in that position if you don’t have to.

2. Timing: When you publish it.

Even if you’ve decided that you simply MUST publish this piece of work, that it’s been fact checked to your standards and you are confident you will be contributing something meaningful, the next question is: why right now? Will it still be as relevant in several days? Often the answer is yes. At that point the facts will have solidified (to a degree – there still are many unknowns about the Boston bombings and subsequent chronology), you won’t be competing with the hyper-activity of social media and television during a breaking news event, and you will be able to promote your work without feeling like you are somehow capitalizing on a tragedy.

Obviously the specifics of these two factors changes depending on your situation, your editors, and your interests. But playing to your strengths and considering the timing of any piece of work I think are handy rules of thumb.

Kathleen Raven, who is about to graduate with a journalism degree from the University of Georgia (congrats!) thinks about things this way:

One August evening in 2006, the newsroom police scanner garbled to life at the mid-sized daily where I worked. Amid static and electronic beeps, we heard: “…Apartment fire…” At that late hour, only the political reporter, myself (on the education beat and everything else) and the news editor heard the call. The photographer phoned — she was already en route. My partner and I split up: He would talk with officials, and I would pester anguished families whose life memories were by then swallowed in flames. A large crowd had gathered in the main office of the apartment complex. With notepad clearly in hand, I pushed open the glass door. From those who noticed my presence: stares. Then averted eyes. At that moment, I wanted to walk away. Damn the “color” the editor reminded us to capture. But structure fires and crime scenes belong to local news. With no choice, I moved forward and found willing narrators who helped me piece together who, what, when and where. Fire officials attempted to answer why. The story ran, front page, above the fold. There were no deaths.

But I despised then my role as intruder and stranger while covering breaking news. I had a hard time justifying

When Hurricane Sandy tore through the northeastern U.S. in October 2012, I stayed on the sidelines as a science reporter in New York City at the time. But I jumped in as a volunteer and relished the chance to help and not ask survivors questions. Later, I found a story that fit the guidelines Lena Groeger has so aptly described: 1) it was a topic I’d gained some surefooted knowledge about; 2) it would remain relevant after the devastating event.

The need to hold back and avoid reporting because a story “has to be done” remains more important now than ever for both specialized and generalist journalists. Gideon Lichfield, news editor of Quartz, elaborates on this “battle for attention,” as he calls it, this in an elegant, short post. Paul Raeburn of the KSJ Tracker blog — where I discovered Lichfield’s post — provides examples of science journalism attempts that missed the mark.

My litmus test for science journalists debating whether or not to cover a national or local tragedy is this: How is this subject matter important beyond this crisis moment?

On April 29, New America NYC will hold a discussion on this very subject, described in part as “Where, exactly, is the line between being a chronicler and being a vulture?” (Full disclosure: Torie Bosch, editor of Future Tense (which is a project of Slate and the New America Foundation) is my friend.)

Rose Eveleth (hey that’s me!) had a hard time with this question last week:

I think everyone has a different line to draw here, but I’m curious what goes through editors and writers heads when they take on a breaking story like this. Here’s my perspective. It’s not the right one, it’s just mine.

When the bombs went off, I got an email from my editor. We went back and forth all day about how take on the story, but a lot of them made me cringe. Eventually, we just didn’t. We didn’t touch it. A few days later, we gave readers two stories, a history of Chechnya, and a look back at how quickly news spread in the past as opposed to now.

Other places had different outlooks on it. And honestly, some of those stories, especially the day of the bombings, made me feel gross. They felt forced and slimy – like an editor said “we have to do a story about Boston” rather than “we should do a story about Boston.” The difference to me is that the former is driven by traffic (everyone will be searching for news about Boston, and we’ll have a story, so we’ll show up and get clicks) while the latter is driven by the instinct to provide information that people need.

The rule that I didn’t come up with but that I think is really good is this: you should do the story if it answers a question that a) people actually have at that moment and b) other people aren’t answering well. There are a lot of places where science can definitely provide b. I think it’s a where many fall down. In the hours after the bombs go off, does anyone really want to know about the latest prosthetic technology? Or the coolest bomb proofing materials? No, they probably don’t. They want to know what is going on, what is safe and not safe, and how to find their loved ones.

In the days after the events, it seems like there are more opportunities to work science into the coverage. How do tourniquets work and why are they suddenly back in favor in emergency situations? What can war time medicine teach us about dealing with these sorts of bomb injuries? Why exactly don’t cell phones work during disasters? These are questions that people might actually have, that science can provide the answers to.

So in the unfortunate (yet, sadly likely) event that something like Boston, or Aurora, or Newtown should happen again, that’s what I’ll be asking myself. Is this a question people have now that isn’t being answered well? If yes, do the story. If no, shut up and find a different way to help.

And here are Bora’s thoughts: 

When news breaks, there are several considerations I have in mind.

First, how do I behave as an individual (e.g., on social media) and what do I do as a Scientific American editor as a part of a team? I tend not to retweet everything others tweet until I can verify it in some way – at least seeing a number of my most trusted sources tweeting the information with inclusion of commentary of their own certainty in the facts. I tend to wait and see, and then, perhaps a day or two later, focus on sources like The Guardian and NYTimes from traditional side, and expert bloggers on the non-traditional side of the media. As an editor, I work closely with the rest of the team, especially our online news editor Robin Lloyd, to quickly but thoughtfully decide which angles should we, as a science media organization, cover. Just facts of the events as they unfold are not really our domain. Science explainers are our domain, where we are a trusted source – is it something that the public will find useful or interesting?

Second, am I myself an eyewitness or not? If something would happen right in front of me, or in the neighborhood so I could quickly get to the scene, I’d bring all the cameras and recorders and extra batteries I have and mostly tweet lots of images and videos, with perhaps a few comments of my own. I would not stick the microphone into the face of someone most directly affected by the event – they are far too disturbed by the event to make the right, clear decision if they want to talk to me. Other eye-witnesses are probably no better than I am, and there is no guarantee that what they would say is what they really saw or just something they overheard, or some conspiracy theory they just concocted inside their own heads. Cops and first responders have more important things to do than talk to me, not to mention they probably do not know if they have the clearance from their supervisors to tell what they know. And I am not sure I have the personal courage to risk getting handcuffed, pepper-sprayed or beaten by some nervous cop who does not give a damn I am a journalist but is looking for an outlet for his own tensions – remember that his job is very dangerous and my intrusion into it may not be welcome.

But if I am not an eye-witness but sitting in the comfort of my own home, I may ask the 50+ bloggers on our network if they can contribute a post adding their own scientific expertise on the event. For example, when a sinkhole opened up in Florida and swallowed a man, I asked my two geology bloggers to explain how and why that happens, which they did wonderfully. Or, if we do not have just the right expertise on our network, I can crowdsource on Twitter, or directly approach an expert for a particular topic we need covered. For example, Chris Rowan explained the Japanese eartquake/tsunami, Rita J. King explained the safety of Fukushima, and Anne Jefferson explained the Mississipi floods. There is also usually no need to rush – Kathleen’s post about Sandy and the “bluebelt” system on Staten Island could wait a week or so, adding the explanation after the acute effects of the disaster were already over and people started looking for more in-depth explanations for various aspects of the storm damage.

Third, is there a strong science component to the news? There is much more science to be covered if it is a natural disaster (e.g., Fukushima earthquake/tsunami/meltdown, or Sandy) or an accident (West, TX explosion last week), than if it is an act of human violence (various shootings and bombings). The latter make us at SciAm much more careful – is there really something we can add to the noise, is there really a science angle to it? We don’t need to chase traffic for the sake of traffic, but need to make sure we are adding something useful to the discussion. Are there questions that people are asking but nobody is answering (I answered one of those, about the fate of subway rats during Sandy)? Are there questions people don’t even know they should be asking? If it is about human violence, perhaps the science angle is not so much about weapons or psychology  as it is about technology used to find perpetrators (how does an infra-red camera work?) or figure out what really happened (various forensic techniques, etc).

Fourth, is there a lot of erroneous science already out there, either in the traditional media or on social media that needs to be corrected? If there is, then writing good explainers, publishing them fast, and pushing the links everywhere is important. This is probably the most important situation where we as science writers can contribute – to counter bad science if it is already being circulated around the Web.

So, that’s what we came up with. What do you all think? Are we totally off? Interestingly, none of us work at a breaking news organization. Propublica does long investigative work, Kathleen and I freelance for all sorts of places, and Erin is at a research institution. We aren’t under the same pressure that someone working at Scientific American or Reuters would be to break news or crank out stories. I’d love to hear from those who do work at science publications that do more news – how do you decide what to write and when to stay quiet?

And, since I think everybody needs it and since we can’t break tradition of having a GIF in each post, here’s a cat dressed as a shark on a Roomba chasing a duckling:

May this week be better than last for you all.

Erin Podolak puts it this way:

Bora chose us by sifting through the work of dozens of new science journalists, by narrowing down his list slowly to make sure that he chose three panelists and a moderator whose experience and interests would make the best lineup. He ended up with four women. As four women who now have an international platform to discuss our profession, should we address our gender or not? Is it the proverbial gorilla in the room? Do we have some kind of duty to use our powers for good to try to tackle feminism and journalism just because we can? Are we putting some kind of target on our backs for criticism by calling attention to our gender?

Among the #sci4hels team, we talked a bit about whether or not we should touch the gender issue. Together, we decided to go there. We all have different reasons, I think, but regardless of why, we asked the question. And I think we got a ton of useful answers from all sorts of different people. So, without further ado, here’s my summary of the conversation.

The third question the #sci4hels team tackled was a touchier one. How can we get women to the top in journalism? We used the term “masthead” here a lot, but of course that comes from a print model. What we really mean is how to get women to the top.

There are tons of things that we didn’t talk about here. I’m personally really interested in how this discussion of women applies to video and audio. Women’s voices are consistently called “shrill” and “annoying” and their appearance trumps what they might be saying. Does this make it even harder to climb to the top in those fields? And, is science journalism any different from any other type of journalism? Are we better or worse?

I’d love to keep the discussion going in the comments here, with both practical tips for lady-journos who might want to one day be at the top, and thoughts on the overall landscape.

Tumbleweeds – this one has a quirky twist ending, which is what made it so fun to work on.

The Bottle Story – this is a much more recent podcast that I actually never showed to anyone, but I really like.

Girl Talk – sometimes girls, like, talk, sort of funny? But chances are that as you chastise them, you’re picking it up too. This one went along with this story in the New York Times. (LISTEN HERE)

Phantom Vibrations – you know that feeling when you think your phone is ringing, you’re SURE your phone is ringing, but it’s not? Here’s why that happens.

That’s Disgusting – but why? What makes something disgusting?

Do you have some podcasts you really like? Nominate them for Science Studio! We’re collecting the v

Welcome back to Question Time! Last week we had our second Twitter discussion, and let me tell you people it either went way better or way worse depending on how much you like corn gods. Here’s the Storify:

]]> http://roseveleth.com/blog/sci4hels-question-time-2-how-do-you-get-noticed/feed/ 2 http://roseveleth.com/blog/sci4hels-question-time-1-recap-beats-and-corn-gods/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sci4hels-question-time-1-recap-beats-and-corn-gods http://roseveleth.com/blog/sci4hels-question-time-1-recap-beats-and-corn-gods/#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:00:15 +0000 Rose Eveleth http://roseveleth.com/blog/?p=163 … Read More →]]>

The corn god Tlaloc. This will only make sense to you if you read the post. Image: Baggis

So on Monday we kicked off the #sci4hels Question Time! Which I explained here but is not hard to understand. Basically, once in a while, I’ll ask a question on Twitter and hope that people jump in and respond and have an interesting discussion. That did happen on Monday, although not quite  the way I expected. Let’s review.

The question:

Oh man question time! #sci4hels wants to know: Is science a specific enough beat, or do you have to specialize more?

— Rose Eveleth (@roseveleth) March 11, 2013

On Twitter (and elsewhere), there’s been a lot of conversation about beats. Quartz has switched to “obsessions” but no one really knows what that means.

There were some interesting, and conflicting answers to be had.

People consume all sorts of science writing, which requires all sorts of types of science writers.#sci4hels

— Shaun Hotchkiss (@just_shaun) March 11, 2013

Surely there is a market for both. i.e. science writers who are very general and active researchers who focus on their field. #sci4hels — Shaun Hotchkiss (@just_shaun) March 11, 2013

#sci4hels Power is with science writers who are able to link science to specific causes (eg mix science with advocacy to elicit change) 1/2 — Khalil A. Cassimally (@notscientific) March 11, 2013

#sci4hels To do so, need to understand more than just the science. Hence more specific perhaps not as useful. 2/2 — Khalil A. Cassimally (@notscientific) March 11, 2013

People like Lou Woodley, Laura Wheeler and David Manly pointed out that beats can help writers develop expertise and contacts. Having a beat helps someone know who to ask when they’re working on a story, or understand the latest finding in the context of the broader field. Then I went and said something controversial, as I am often prone to doing: that the internet makes finding sources and background information easy enough that beats aren’t required anymore. To find the right source for something, as a science reporter, you just find the paper, and email the authors. Google Scholar and email have made finding sources a breeze, and the internet has archived all the background you could possibly want on every topic. Not everyone agreed:

@roseveleth @boraz @davidmanly @just_shaun internet can also make it harder – there is so much to sift through! Need to know *where* to look — Laura Wheeler (@laurawheelers) March 11, 2013

@roseveleth @laurawheelers @boraz @just_shaun If you know what to look for — David Manly (@davidmanly) March 11, 2013

Ed Yong came up with an apt analogy:

@roseveleth As in wild, specialists exploit niches well but vulnerable to extinct’n. Generalists more resilient, but some are rats #sci4hels — Ed Yong(@edyong209) March 11, 2013

And then, well, I’m not really sure what happened. But the conversation started to get away from me. At which point I was like:   And then finally gave up. Elsewhere on Twitter, Erin Podolak was actually having a constructive discussion of the question at hand.

Re: beats/specialties I write about cancer, but in such a broad context with so many connections that I don’t find it limiting #sci4hels — Erin Podolak (@ErinPodolak) March 11, 2013

Okay, so what did we learn here. First, that having a guided conversation on Twitter is HARD. It felt kind of like playing this cat piano.

Okay really I just want to use this cat piano GIF, because LOOK AT IT. Second, I should have used a hashtag so I could just Storify this rather than combing through a bunch of Tweets. Next time we’ll be Tweeting with the #helsinkiquestions hashtag. Third, beats are useful if you want to have one. Obviously, lots of people are quite successful at their beats because they’re the experts. Look at Emily Willingham on autism, Maryn McKenna on MRSA and Maia Szalavitz on addiction. Other science journalists have more broad beats. Ed Yong and Carl Zimmer have a loosely defined biology beat on lockdown. Colin Schultz covers all things Canada. Some of us are searching for a beat, and others of us are willfully ignoring the question. Basically, Ed Yong sums it up pretty well here:

@roseveleth @boraz @davidmanly @laurawheelers @just_shaun “The right level of specialisation is the exact level I have” <- All the answers

— Ed Yong(@edyong209) March 11, 2013

So what should we cover next time? Coding? Freelancing vs. full time jobs? The impending threat of computer reporters? Ask us a question!

It’s been about a month since our Kickstarter campaign ended, and what a month it’s been. But now, Bora, Ben and I finally have some time to take a look back and see just how it all went down. So here are some statistics provided by Kickstarter, and some more information about what the heck we’re doing with all this money.

First, the statistics! 

We set out asking for $5,000 to help us cover things like prizes for the judges, and our own time. All told, 234 people backed our project and wound up handing over a grand total of $8,160, over $3,000 more than our goal. Which is, in a word, awesome, and also means that we can include video this year rather than just audio. Combined with the grant we got from NASW, we’re pretty confident that we can put something together that’s really great.

Here’s what the Kickstarter campaign looked like over time:

Okay, so, where did all you generous donors come from? Well, most of you came from Twitter. Here’s a breakdown of the top few referring sites:

So, thanks Twitter! You’re the best!

When we were talking about doing a Kickstarter, someone mentioned that we really had to make a video. Now, I’m glad we did, because 2,000 people watched it, and about 40% of you watched it all the way to the end.

Nothing was incredibly surprising here, in terms of trends. Twitter was a powerhouse, but it was also the place we promoted the most. You all love hearing our dulcet tones in the video, no surprise there. What we’d really like to say, most of all, is thank you. And you. And you. And my mom. And you too. We promise we’ll spend your money wisely and make something awesome.

Oh and if you missed out on the Kickstarter somehow, it’s not too late to give us your money! Here’s a handy dandy donate button.

Okay, what’s next?

The three of us are busy doing a couple of things. First, we’re building the website for Science Studio – the place where all this awesome audio and video will live. Second, we’re corralling all the swag to send to you. Third, we’re trying to spread the word about our nomination form – do you know any audio or video that’s really awesome? Nominate it!

Okay, I think that about sums it up? Questions? Comments? Concerns? Email us, or Tweet us at @science_studio.

Happy interneting everybody!

Rose, Bora and Ben

I’m not going to talk about Nate Thayer, because I think that case is dumb. Olga Khazan made a mistake in her first two weeks of a job (Olga, I don’t know you, but if I ever do meet you I will buy you a drink because damn the internet sucks some times) and Nate Thayer feels the need to turn everything into an investigative take-down. Whatever. I’m over it. What I want to talk about is being a new journalist. Because I have some confessions. I am a professional journalist. I am also brand new at being one. And, most shockingly, I have worked for free.

So what I want to talk about is mixed messages. Should you ever work for free? There is obviously no single answer. Hello, this is the world, things are complicated, sorry. But let’s pretend for a second that you’re a spritely young/early career/newb journalist. Here are some of the messages you’re getting:

Message #1. Just do your thing, and if it’s good someone will notice.

Robert Krulwich probably has one of the best versions of this message. He gave a talk to the Berkeley School of Journalism in which he said:

But there are some people, who don’t wait.

I don’t know exactly what going on inside them; but they have this… hunger. It’s almost like an ache.

and then he said:

Suppose, instead of waiting for a job offer from the New Yorker, suppose next month, you go to your living room, sit down, and just do what you love to do. If you write, you write. You write a blog. If you shoot, find a friend, someone you know and like, and the two of you write a script. You make something. No one will pay you. No one will care, No one will notice, except of course you and the people you’re doing it with. But then you publish, you put it on line, which these days is totally doable, and then… you do it again.

…

After they wrote, they tweeted and facebooked and flogged their blogs, and because they were good, and worked hard, within a year or two, magazines asked them to affiliate (on financial terms that were insulting), but they did that, and their blogs got an audience, and then they got magazine assignments, then agents, then book deals, and now, three, four years after they began, these folks, five or six of them, are beginning to break through. They are becoming not just science writers with jobs, they are becoming THE science writers, the ones people read, and look to… they’re going places. And they’re doing it on their own terms! In their own voice, they’re free to be themselves AND they’re paid for it!

Lots and lots of other people have said this sort of thing. A lot. I can’t link to them all because I’m a newb freelance journalist and I’m kind of supposed to be working right now.

The message is that the internet is the great democratizer. On the internet, you can just publish your own work. You can tell the stories you think need to be told and you can tell them your way. And anyone in the whole world can read them. That’s how some really big names started – look at Alexis Madrigal and Ed Yong. They wrote for nothing, or peanuts and they’re now some of the most respected writers and editors around. The message is that if your work is good enough, and you put it somewhere on the internet, you will get noticed. You will get hired and become the next Jad Abumrad or something.

I was once at a talk where a New Yorker editor was a guest. An early career journalist asked him whether he had advice for breaking into the vaulted halls of the New Yorker. His answer (I’m paraphrasing): “Just go out there and report the story. If you really believe in it, just do it. And then publish it on your blog.” Her response (again, paraphrasing): “So I’m supposed to go report a 30,000 word deep dive into something, and then publish it on my blog and hope people notice?” Obviously that’s ridiculous, but that was his actual answer and I’m a reporter so I reported it. Bam.

Message #2. DEAR GOD WHATEVER YOU DO DO NOT WORK FOR FREE. If you do you are betraying every one of your colleagues, friends, coworkers and their children and their children’s children.

But the idea that anyone should work for free garners strong reactions. From one comment on an Atlantic piece: “Ask any other professional, such as a doctor, auto mechanic, plumber, accountant to do a job for free and sit back and wait for the swearing or the laughter, followed by “get out.” Why should a professional writer be expected to work for free, especially for a national publication?”

And there’s a lot of “if you work for free you’re destroying the careers of everyone around you” that happens on the internet. I have been personally told that projects I’ve done for free were directly hurting my friends.

So, you’re supposed to write for yourself because PASSION, PEOPLE but you’re not supposed to give that writing away. Even though the whole point of you writing on your dinky blog is so that some place, like, say, The Atlantic, notices it and says “hey that’s good we should put it on our website.”

So look. Like I said before, it’s complicated. Obviously you should not report at 30,000 word piece for yourself on your blog unless you have some other income stream. And obviously those who blog for free aren’t evil. What I’m saying is that young writers get mixed messages and we’re sort of confused? Nate Thayer is an amazing professional journalist. It’s easy for him to say no to doing anything for free ever. But for a lot of us, it’s not. So let’s all play nice and try to agree on a few things:

1. Writing for money is better than writing for free. Okay, cool, glad we cleared that up.
2. Sometimes it’s okay to write for free without being the actual worst person in the entire world.
3. If an editor can pay for something, they should pay for it.

That’s all I’m going to say because I am actually supposed to be working for money right now and I agree with Christopher Mims that no one actually cares but I just had these THOUGHTS and the world really needed to know them.

Are journalists aware that hardly anything is less interesting to the general public than debates about journalism? Who do we serve, again?

— Christopher Mims (@mims) March 7, 2013

Top image: mikeschilli 

Hello world! Wow, it’s March. How is it March? That means in just a few months, science journalists of the world will unite at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Helsinki, to face the forces of evil and figure out all of journalism’s problems in one fell swoop. Or just to hang out and try to chip away at them one by one because that’s kind of a lot to ask.

One of those sessions is the “The ‘killer’ science journalists of the future” in which three lovely panelists (Lena Groeger, Erin Podolak and Kathleen Raven) will share their thoughts on what it takes to make it as a newcomer in journalism today, and what that means for the journalism of tomorrow. Can I tell you that I’m excited? This excited:

In the run up to that panel discussion, we’re going to pose a few questions to the Twitter world and try to drum up some discussion that will be extended into the session. Why yes, I am outsourcing my work as a moderator to you, fine Twitterverse, and you are going to fall for my little plan. So here’s what we’ll do. Every so often we’ll pose a question on Twitter with the #sci4hels hashtag and hope that you’ll join our discussion. And! If you have a question you want us to ask to the world, leave it for me here in the comments. The future of our panel is in your hands, so speak up.

Our first question will be revealed on Monday of next week, so get ready.

If you’re asking yourself “what the heck are you talking about you crazy woman?” here are some background links.

Here’s a blog about our panel at Scientific American, introducing everyone.

Here’s the Sci4Hels blog. 

Get it now? Good.

 (Top photograph by Russ Creech, other photographs by the internet)

I don’t really remember where I got it from, and I don’t really remember when I started saying it, but for those unfamiliar with its usage it generally conveys a sense of fear or embarrassment.

So, I googled it. Turns out, kids in Massachusetts were threatened with suspension for saying it too much. ABC News:

But the nonsense word — which apparently started with the 1980s Muppet character Beaker — is causing a lot of teeth-gnashing for adults at one Massachusetts high school. They have gone so far as to threaten suspension for students caught meeping.

So in that article, they attribute the meep to Beaker. Here’s the musical version:

But another famous children’s character said meep: the Roadrunner. (Well, I think the Road Runner technically says beep beep, but let’s go with it)

And, another set of characters uses the word: The Smurfs. According to Wikipedia, “The Smurfs frequently replace both nouns and verbs in everyday speech with the word Smurf.”

Urban dictionary says:

The most versatile word in the English language, or in fact any language!

Can mean whatever you want it to mean, but the most popular uses are:
1. An exclamation akin to ‘ouch’ or ‘uh oh..’
2. Filling in the blanks where other (rude) words would go.
3. A greeting! I personally say meep instead of Hello…
4. A random expression of happiness used to fill gaps in conversation.

At Wired, they fought back against the Massachusset school’s anti-meep policies:

While we at GeekDad would certainly never advocate disrupting a school, we nonetheless think the principal’s warning sounds awfully like a challenge. We would like to suggest a few possible substitutes, as “meep” tenderizers if you will: “Ni!” is a fine and wonderful classic, and considerably easier to remember than “Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing Zow Zing”; “Spoooon!” might work nicely, or perhaps “Zoinks!“; or, if you want to stick with Muppet-related cries, you can’t go wrong with “Bork bork bork!”

And for me, I’ll probably keep using it, even if it puts me in the same league as a couple of middle schoolers and a muppet. Because that’s basically where I’ve been my whole life. Meep.