Welcome back for another installment of Ask TON. (Wondering what Ask TON is? See here for background information and our introductory post. Click on “Ask TON” above to see previous installments.) Today’s question: I’d like to do more international travel as part of my work. I don’t really know how to begin finding stories in [...]
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Tags: Ask TON, Borrell, Field Reporting, Finding Ideas, Fox, Graber, International, Pitches, Rosner, Sohn, Stone 
1 Comment »Whether you rely on a digital recorder or a laptop or a ragtag collection of mismatched notebooks, you need to take good notes. That doesn’t just mean that your handwriting needs to be legible — though that matters too. It means that your notes capture the essence of what you have observed, from the words [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Field Reporting, Grimm, Interviewing, Notes, Notetaking, Reporting, Tools 4 Comments »Today’s installment of Ask TON kicks off a series of posts, each of which in its own way addresses ethical issues that can arise when writers shadow scientists long enough to cross the line from journalist to buddy. To get things started, here’s today’s Ask TON: I will be embedded with a scientist whom I [...]
Posted in Ask TON Tags: Ask TON, Ethics, Field Reporting, Harmon, Henig, Nijhuis, Rogers, Vastag 3 Comments »You never know when a story idea will land on your doorstep—or in your mailbox. When award-winning journalist Michelle Nijhuis learned about caver and microbiologist Hazel Barton from a friend, she had no idea Barton would be her ticket into a science story she had been itching to tell, about a fungus that is ravaging [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Carpenter, Drafts, Edits, Environment, Field Reporting, Microbiology, Narrative, Nijhuis, Pitches, Smithsonian, Writer Interview 3 Comments »On Friday, February 12, 2010, biologist Amy Bishop stood up in a conference room at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and shot six of her colleagues; three died. Nature correspondent Meredith Wadman visited the campus to recount the horror of those moments and efforts to rebuild a shattered department. [Life After Death appeared in [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Drafts, Erdmann, Field Reporting, Narrative, Nature, Wadman, Writer Interview No Comments »In 2007, freelance science journalist Douglas Fox traveled to Antarctica with a team of glaciologists studying rivers and lakes buried under thousands of feet of ice. He and the researchers spent four weeks tent-camping on the ice. They spent up to 10 hours a day on snowmobiles, installing monitoring equipment at key sites on the [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Carpenter, Discover, Earth Science, Environment, Field Reporting, Fox, Narrative, Notes, Photography, Pitches, Writer Interview 4 Comments »Freelancer Hillary Rosner traveled to a Colorado River reservoir to meet scientists bent on rescuing an unassuming fish, the razorback sucker. The resulting story, which won the 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the Small Newspaper category, raised tough questions about the rationale for saving endangered species. [One Tough Sucker appeared in High Country [...]
For his first major feature, freelancer Brendan Borrell crisscrossed Bolivia for 2 ½ weeks in an old truck with notebook, recorder, and camera, waiting out roadblocks, going a long time between meals, and of course munching hot chili peppers. [What’s So Hot About Chili Peppers? appeared in Smithsonian in April 2009.] Here, Borrell tells the [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Borrell, Drafts, Erdmann, Field Reporting, Narrative, Pitches, Profile, Smithsonian, Writer Interview No Comments »