To make our work possible, The Open Notebook depends on donations from our community. Thanks to a pool of generous matching donors, gifts made to TON from now through December 31 will be doubled, up to a total of $5,000. If TON is a meaningful resource for you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.
Schrodinger’s Peep. Rice CRISPR/Peep9. The first “Peep”eration with ether. All monumental advances in science—with a marshmallow twist. These are just three of the 50 dioramas created by science-minded crafters and entered in the first-ever World’s Finest (and Only…As Far as We Know) Science-Themed Peeps Diorama Contest. Our gallery of the sweet tableaux is now open, and anyone can vote (through April 14) for their favorite to win the highly coveted Peeple’s Choice Award.
What happens if you ask a child, “Hey, do you want to talk to a scientist?” That question drove science writer Jenny Cutraro to develop Science Storytellers, a public engagement program that aims to sit children down to interview scientists, just like professional journalists do—and then to share their science stories. The Science Storytellers booth will be at AAAS’s Family Science Days in Washington, DC on February 16 and 17. Join us!
Christie Aschwanden thought writing a book about how the body recovers from exercise and builds resilience for further challenges should be easy. In her mind’s eye, she could almost picture how the chapters would unspool. But as she dug into reporting and writing her new book, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery, she learned how mistaken she’d been—laughably so, she says.
When BuzzFeed News’s Nidhi Subbaraman began covering the Rosebud Sioux tribe’s lawsuit against the U.S. government for its failure to provide treaty-mandated health care to tribal members, she discovered “seriously horrifying stories” of substandard care and neglect. Digging deeper, she found a narrative of not only hurt and outrage but also resilience and activism. Here, Subbaraman tells the story behind her story.
Reading nonfiction stories closely, for the purpose of studying the craft, usually requires reading them several times with some purposeful questions in mind, then giving yourself the gift of time to think about how you might incorporate some of your observations into your own work. Here, we suggest some of the kinds of questions you can ask about a feature story to deepen your perceptions of it and to get you thinking about how writers make the most of their craft.
What happens if you ask a child, “Hey, do you want to talk to a scientist?” That question drove science writer Jenny Cutraro to develop Science Storytellers, a public engagement program that aims to sit children down to interview scientists, just like professional journalists do—and then to share their science stories. The answer, it turns out, is that kids eat it up. Want to see for yourself?
Join TON and Science Storytellers at Family Science Days at the 2018 AAAS meeting in Austin, Texas.
In December 2014, Steve Mishkin suffered a near-fatal brain injury. But he recovered, for reasons as uncertain as the events that led to his injury. Writing for The Atlantic, Apoorva Mandavilli details the many “ingredients” that likely contributed to Mishkin’s recovery. Challenges of reporting the story, Mandavilli says, included piecing together a detailed medical narrative, investigating a stubborn mystery, and maintaining journalistic distance while reporting on deeply personal events in the lives of friends. Here, she tells the story behind her story.
Today, The Open Notebook is pleased and proud to announce a partnership with the authors of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide. The book, forthcoming on March 1 from Yale University Press and funded by grants from the Sloan Foundation and from the National Association of Science Writers, is aimed at science journalists, scientists, and anyone else who has something to say about science and wants to do it on a blogging platform.
Seth Mnookin was drawn to Bertrand Might’s family’s story by a simple question: What do you do when you learn your child could die from a disease with no other known sufferers? Reporting for The New Yorker on the scientific and administrative complexities surrounding rare diseases. In his reporting, Mnookin discovered “remarkable amounts of grace” in the families struggling to understand and cope with their children’s illness. Here, Mnookin tells the story behind his story.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of taking a writing or editing course from Jacqui Banaszynski, you’re missing out. Banaszynski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and editor who teaches at the University of Missouri School of […]
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Deborah Blum’s five books have immersed her in the worlds of animal rights, the psychology of affection, the neurology of sex, the search for paranormal phenomena, and the chemistry of poisons. Her New York […]
This giving season, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to TON. All donations are being matched, up to a total of $5,000. Learn more here or just click here to donate.
We’re giving away 20 Kindle copies of The Craft of Science Writing!
Giveaway ends December 13, 2019.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
The TON #PeepYourScience contest will return in 2020! Read all about The World’s Finest (and Only … As Far as We Know) Science-Themed Peeps Diorama Contest here and watch this space for more information in January.
Pitching Errors: How Not to Pitch
Tools: Planner Pad, the Funnel of Focus
Taking Good Notes: Tricks and Tools
How Rebecca Skloot Built The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Trading the Pipette for the Pen: Transitioning from Science to Science Writing
On Being a Science Writer and Managing a Mental Illness
Are You a Writer or an Editor? Part I: The Writers
The Science Byline Counting Project: Where Are the Women—and Where Are They Not?
Navigating Newsrooms as a Minority
How to Talk to Your Facebook Friends about Fake News
Explaining Complexity
Nailing the Nut Graf
The Art of the Essay
Feeling Like a Fraud: The Impostor Phenomenon in Science Writing
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