Today we continue our series Single Best. We asked top journalists and editors to give us their single best piece of advice — given or taken, their single best idea, reporting trip or memorable experience. Here, Maryn McKenna shares a lesson she learned while reporting on a tsunami. McKenna is a columnist for Scientific American, a blogger for Wired [...]
Posts Tagged ‘McKenna’
Maryn McKenna reports the dark side of agriculture
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann on February 12th, 2013
Science journalist Maryn McKenna has covered the infectious diseases beat for more than a decade. During that time, she’s written countless articles and two award-winning books on the subject. Through her reporting, she developed an interest in how large-scale farming operations spread antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Last year, McKenna produced a package of stories on women who had [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews 
Tags: ABC News, Atlantic, Erdmann, McKenna, Pitches, Public Health, Superbug, Wired, Writer Interview 
2 Comments »Cramming for the Slam
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann on October 24th, 2012
Few tasks bring more stress and anxiety to freelancers than pitching a story, except coming face-to-face with an editor at a meeting and pitching a story on the spot — in front of an audience. With ScienceWriters2012 and the Pitch Slam in just a few days, we decided to help freelancers prepare by offering up [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Ask TON, Elements-of-Craft, Erdmann, Ferber, Maher, McKenna, Pitches, Pitching, ScienceWriters 2 Comments »Ask TON: Organizing notes
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on June 6th, 2012
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 have a confession. I don’t really know how to take good research notes. When I’m reporting feature stories, I end up with [...]
Making the leap from news to books: Critical questions
Posted by Charles Choi on May 30th, 2012
Authors of science books often begin as writers of science news. As a science journalist who is looking to write a book, I’ve become very curious as to how other science journalists made the leap forward. I suspected that the questions that go into books might be different from those that drive newspaper and magazine [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Blum, Books, Choi, Dobbs, Elements-of-Craft, Guest Contributor, Hutson, Koerth-Baker, McKenna, Narrative, Reporting, Zimmer 5 Comments »Happy Birthday to us! And…introducing “Ask TON”
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on October 24th, 2011
TON is one! A year ago today, The Open Notebook published our first stories, launching an ongoing series of “story behind the story” interviews with some of the science journalists whose work we admire. Our idea then, as now, was that despite the changing marketplace for science journalism, craftsmanship still matters. With that in mind, [...]
Maryn McKenna describes life as “Scary-Disease Girl”
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann on August 30th, 2011
For nearly all her career, journalist and author Maryn McKenna has written about public health, from Midwest droughts to bird flu to Gulf War Syndrome. While covering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, McKenna got the nickname “Scary-Disease Girl,” a moniker that befits the infectious disease beat she has [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Books, Erdmann, Health, Infectious Disease, McKenna, Notes, Pitches, SciAm, Soundslides, Superbug, Tools, Writer Interview 3 Comments »