Beantown’s Bedpans and Test Tubes Get Serious Attention at Stat News
When you’re a billionaire, you can buy all sorts of toys and the Boston-based commodities trading tycoon John W. Henry III has bought some nice ones—a baseball team (the Red Sox), an English soccer team (Liverpool FC), and a newspaper (the Boston Globe). When Henry bought the Globe in 2013 for $70 million (the seller, the New York Times Company, had paid $1.1 billion in 1993), he rescued it from a death spiral of declining revenue and declining journalism. The Globe has since had a transfusion of cash, talent, and ambition. Last November, Henry took his commitment one step further with the creation of Stat, “a serious, standalone news organization” to cover the life sciences, with a central focus on the Boston area. Forty journalists were hired including some big names—Sharon Begley, Carl Zimmer, and the duo that founded “Retraction Watch,” Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky.
So far, Stat is serious. (The standalone part is a little confusing as Stat stories appear in the Globe. Stat’s standalone business model is not entirely clear either.) Megan Thielking does the daily email called “Morning Rounds.” Sharon Begley wades into scientific controversies including the recent dust up surrounding ASCB member Eric Lander’s essay in Cell on the history of CRISPR. Writer Carl Zimmer takes an entirely different direction at Stat as the on-camera video correspondent for “Science Happens,” a series of news reports produced by Matthew Orr. The idea is to go into labs to try to capture the feel, the people, and the purpose behind bioscience research. See Zimmer’s video on ASCB member Pamela Silver’s microbiome work at Harvard Medical School.
Stat is also intensely Boston. There are blogs called “Pulse of Longwood” and “Kendall Squared.” If you don’t know the Green Line, the Green Monster, and Hub City, Stat might leave you puzzled at times. Or green with envy.
Seriously? 9 Reasons to Take Buzzfeed Seriously About Science
Buzzfeed is famous (or notorious) for its eyeball-catching lists like “The 24 Cutest Animals Wearing Top Hats.” But in August 2015 NBC Universal made a big investment in Buzzfeed, in part, to build a more professional news staff. To launch the new Buzzfeed Science section, it hired prominent science journalists like Dan Vergano, Peter Aldhous, and, as its new Science Editor, Virginia Hughes. Now there’s a Science section in Buzzfeed but you have to hunt for it. It’s hidden in the “more” tab (beneath LOL, omg, fail and cute buttons) but there’s some real science journalism there if you scroll past stories like “Can You Make It Through These Nature GIFs Without Vomiting?” Finally you’ll find Hughes and colleagues doing some real (and generally real short) science reporting. The Science section runs its own patented Buzzfeed listicle, “9 Science Stories You Can’t Miss,” but it’s often worth the click because Hughes aggregates science stories from some of the best and some of the most overlooked science sites on the Internet.