Eric Boodman is a reporter for STAT, where he’s written about entomologists who specialize in fictional infestations, Haitian-American hospital workers lost to COVID-19, and many other subjects. His pieces have also appeared in TheAtlantic.com, Undark, and The Boston Globe Magazine.
Many journalists feel anxiety when dealing with statistics, data, or even arithmetic in their work, to the point where some consider being “bad at math” practically a badge of honor. But math anxiety is neither fixed nor insurmountable—it is the product of deeply ingrained thought patterns, ones that can be changed and altered to more positive, productive, and self-affirming ones. There are also many free or cheap ways to improve your math skills without large time commitments.
The pandemic left many writers without one of their main tools to write engaging scenes: going to places where they can experience the story firsthand. Many audio producers are accustomed to telling stories from a distance, so the questions they ask to create sensory scenes didn’t change much in remote reporting. However, they did have to make some adjustments. They’ve used all sorts of interviewing techniques, from video tours to interviews by voice notes, to bring depth to their stories and characters.
In December 2020, Kenyan freelance science journalist Geoffrey Kamadi won the gold award in the small-outlet category of the 2020 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards for his investigative story for Science Africa, “Tana River Basin under Threat.” For his story, Kamadi traveled to the Tana River Delta, where he meets farmers whose livelihoods have been greatly damaged, listening to their stories of yellowing banana plants and reduced rice production.
Two of Latria Graham’s best-recognized stories detail, for Outside magazine, her personal reckonings with being a Black woman experiencing and writing about the outdoors. The second, entitled “Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream,” is a piece that “cost me a piece of my soul that I will never get back,” she says. Here, Graham speaks with science writer Eva Legge on how she balances her well-being with the emotional toll of reporting on race.
No journalist understands the complexities of zoonotic diseases quite like David Quammen. In 2012, he published Spillover, a book predicting the arrival of a terrible pandemic, spurred by a novel virus passing from animals to humans. For that project, he traveled to remote villages, walked through forests, and crawled in caves looking for answers. But when the world-changing pandemic finally arrived, it brought a new challenge: He had to cover it from home.
Follow Us