---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Luhn <luhn@ncse.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 7:58 PM
Subject: Re: Howdy from Barrett
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>


Sir:

Thanks for the note. My knee (or elbow) - jerk reaction?

Improving science journalism is a laudable goal. But perhaps the bigger issue is a huge lack of <<any>> science journalism out there. In fact, I might suggest, instead of creating a technical reading service (because that's what you're really proposing), you might create an editorial group that actually creates sound, snappy, science editorial. But...I digress.

My thoughts:

--This idea presumes that newspapers, et al, run any kind of science news. And given current budgets, if they're running anything, it's from AP or Reuters. And that's about it. Science staffs at pubs, and on cable (like CNN) have been slashed. Who ends up covering science, if at all? the general assignment reporter, and yes, he needs help! But this gets us back to the core crux here...how many outlets, print or otherwise, are bothering to do much of any science coverage/reporting.

--Newspapers? Magazines? Ollld economy.

--Science pubs, et al....probably wouldn't need this service, since they would have onstaff experts in these realms. (Well, namely, the editors.)

--To make a service like this work, it would have to managed by someone with real, daily deadline, editorial experience. Scientists can dither like mad, or find every shade of gray in a topic. Meanwhile, the deadlines have gone whooshing by. This is esp. true with bloggers, where the turnaround times has to be fasssst. So..supplying tech reads? A noble idea. Question is, can it be timely enough?

--Who else has done this? Well, a number of editorial consultants and content services, in a sense. I've done it for tech pubs off and on for years. What you're really conjuring here is something akin to The Science & Entertainment Exchange (http://www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org).. Have you talked to these folks?

--Could I pass this along to journos and such? Sure. But I'd recommend you tighten the pitch on this...it's pretty convoluted. More to the point, I think you should hold a powwow (hell...via WebEx) with a handful of knowledgeable science and tech writers and really beat up this premise...to see how the idea can be honed, to figure out incentives for the media, and to really figure out how aspects of media reform we're realllly talking about. there are lots of media reformers out there and no one listens to them unless they come from CIR or Mother Jones or a handful of others.(Speaking of which, have you read Cory Dean's book)?

Let's talk.

r