By Geoff Brumfiel | May 16, 2012 | No Comments“Listening to a entrepreneurial physicist talking about how to get rich!” Apparently, that was my first tweet. I’ve got no idea who the physicist was, and the get-rich advice must not have been very good—I’m still in journalism. Yet for all my forgetfulness, Twitter remembers the exact moment I came into its life: March 17, 2009 at 13:13:37.Checking back in my calendar, I see that I was covering a physics meeting, and that reminded me of why I signed up. Twitter was still relatively new to me and others over 30, and I thought it might be a good way to cover a big gathering. Soon afterwards I caught on to Twitter’s other main draw: the ... Continue reading →
An outstanding investigation show how chemical companies preserve a toxic cash cow A tremendous Chicago Tribune investigation into flame-retardant chemical manufacturers shows how they push their poisons on an unsuspecting public despite repeated findings that their products do nothing to prevent or delay fires. It’s a sordid tale of powerful corporations, paid shills, and legislative and regulatory impotence—one of the best examples I’ve seen of how private special interests dominate the public interest. The Trib’s series is a devastating piece of muckraking that shows how the chemical industry misleads lawmakers and the public to protect a cash cow. This is how newspaper journalism ought to be done. The paper hits the chemical industry and the folks on its payroll hard, comes to a clear conclusion, ... Continue reading →
American media may cluster in the east, but the west is still the land of pioneers, even in the domains of multimedia and long-form science journalism. Two young trailblazers—Quest, a multimedia science and environment series created in 2007 by KQED, a radio and TV station serving northern California, and Pacific Standard, a research-oriented, bimonthly magazine launched as Miller-McCune in 2008 and headquartered in southern California—deserve a special mention for their recent work. Let’s start with Quest and the unique contribution it made to a long, ongoing story about one the California’s most intractable environmental concerns. On May 14, state officials released the final draft of the Delta Plan to restore the long beleaguered Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a vital estuary that provides water to Central Valley ... Continue reading →
Credit: Uwe Hermann/Wikimedia Commons Over at the blog, Embargo Watch, Ivan Oransky has been on a roll regarding the use of, let’s say, less than exact language in health-related press releases. First – as I noted in an earlier Tracker post - he eviscerated a wildly overstated announcement on red wine and longevity. And on Tuesday, he posted “Sugar makes embargoes stupid, and doesn’t do wonders for a press release either.” His post mostly offers a fascinating look at the bizarre behind-the-scenes politics involved in setting embargoes, in this case regarding a California study that looked at the cognitive effects of adding high-fructose corn syrup and Omega-3 fatty acids (via flaxseed and fish oil capsules) to the diets of maze-navigating rats. The study, published in ... Continue reading →
Jack Kaminsky lives with his mother now. He is 63 years old, broad shouldered, with silver hair and a silver beard. He’s the circulation director of The Joplin Globe, and he and his wife survived the tornado that blew apart their city last May 22 by diving into their basement and listening to “everything fall apart.” When the noise subsided, they pushed opened the door at the top of the stairs and saw over their heads a blue sky. At their feet lay Joplin. Kaminsky was able to salvage an old cabinet-style wall clock from what was left of his home, and he later put it in his office. Its round dial sits above a square picture that reveals—when you get down on your knees ... Continue reading →
USA Today sees an oily, gassy rainbow on America’s energy horizon. “Energy independence isn’t just a pipe dream,” read a large, bold headline on Wednesday’s front. It was draped over an image of oil drums stamped “Made in USA,” laid out like bowling pins in front the US flag. The nearly 2,000-word cover story, by Tim Mullaney, described the current “energy boom” in great detail—from rising oil production and falling oil imports, to the declining price of natural gas, to increasing exports of refined petroleum products—and reported that it promises to deliver a variety of economic benefits, particularly jobs. The piece began with a snapshot of Williamsport, a “once-sleepy chunk of north-central Pennsylvania” that’s become “a star on the map of an emerging national energy ... Continue reading →
