Raleigh News & Observer: Community and self-service of the right kind in statewide science festival.
In the category of non-investigative, non-brilliant, non-breakthrough (or anything even close), non-hard nosed but worthy jobs for local news agencies is coverage of local events that don’t have an iota of dramatic or surprising news. For instance, county fairs and the openings of new schools or factories. Or in the case at the Raleigh News & Observer, staffer Sarah Avery‘s account and curtain raiser for a statewide science festival that starts this weekend.
This is a salute to the everyday story. It’s a pretty good one, with examples of the sorts of things one expects from a public science festival. Like TV celebrities from the blow-it-up-for-data school of reality show, insect races, stargazing, nature outings, and everyday experiences that can teach the public a little bit about scientific temperament and how to use it. Plus, it has some national context via mention of a much larger.
Coverage of such things is the sort of work one can salute despite its obvious conflict of interest. After all, anything that gives the public a friendlier and more insightful ability to enjoy science will deliver more readers for science journalism. It’s an audience builder for our beat (and, one observes, the News & Observer is one of several corporate sponsors). It’s not to be confused with a reporting career devoted to science cheerleading, implying a blindness to screwup and scandal. That is hardly at the top of the list of good ways to be a science writer . It’s merely a little example why one hopes real local hometown journalism with a broad audience – whether on a new or old media platform or maybe both – will persist, prosper, and grow.
(One does wonder, in the department of hard nosed reporting, whether organizers sidestepped overt attention to such newsy topics as evolution, climate change…..)
Grist for the Mill: North Carolina Science Festival.
- Charlie Petit
