The New York Times Reader: Science & Technology. Holly Stocking, ed. (2011). Washington, DC: CQ Press/Sage. pp. 258.
Many newspaper-writing anthologies read like yesterday’s news—a dated pile of clippings with little attention paid to whether the subject matter has much enduring appeal or value. The New York Times Reader series generally avoids this pitfall by selecting subjects that retain their appeal, and presenting them in some of the best journalistic English anywhere. The range of subject matter is impressive, and a reminder of just how often today’s news has a basis in natural sciences, from the effects of cell phones on the brain, to shrinking ice caps and disappearing bats, the prospective nature of life on planets yet to be discovered, and the nature of societies among animals.
The value of this volume for the classroom is enhanced by a number of features that go beyond simple recycling of old content (some of which interested readers already will have seen in the Times’ print edition or on its Web pages). These features include suggestions for students’ own story ideas, annotated text on some of the stories, interviews with reporters, and detailed explanations on some subjects, such as types of feature stories. All enhance the book’s classroom value.
Stocking’s volume will be of greatest value in larger universities that maintain journalistic or other writing programs in sciences and technology. Stocking, who taught science and technology writing at both graduate and undergraduate levels at Indiana University for more than twenty years, has a rare combination of teaching skills and extensive professional experience (the Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Tribune, and the Associated Press) that has helped shape this book into a valuable teaching tool.
This volume is one of a series of similar anthologies from TimesCollege: Arts and Culture, edited by Don McLeese; Business and Economics (Mark W. Tatge), Health and Medicine (Tom Linden, M.D.), and Sports (Malcolm Moran). Each of these has value for courses in their respective fields, for general feature writing, or even leisure reading.
The news is full of important science stories, but news media often have been woefully short of reporters with the training and talents to make important but tough to understand concepts comprehensible to large audiences. This volume notes the value of explanatory writing, and pays commendable attention to ways that writers can make complex concepts understandable to readers. Too much newspaper writing is hit and run (perhaps even “nit and run”), full of colorful observations, personal anecdotes, and superficial ruminations, while the most crucial concepts compel some editors to roll their eyes. Some of our most important news stories today come out of the environmental sciences, notably subjects such as global warming. Even so, how often do editors and reporters engage in a grand tutorial to teach readers something new?
One example: the crucial role played by thermal inertia in the warming (or, conversely, cooling) of the atmosphere. Few readers realize that today’s greenhouse-gas emissions do not become tomorrow’s heat. It takes roughly fifty years for the atmosphere to reach equilibrium with the level of greenhouse gases it contains (150 to 200 years in the oceans). Thus, today’s weather reflects greenhouse-gas levels from roughly 1960.
Even given miles of type and hours of airtime devoted to the subject, very few readers or viewers know much about the geophysical facts of “infrared forcing,” the scientific name for global warming. Most news describes events (individual heat waves, deluges, and so forth), or deals only with the political aspects—who supports attempts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and who does not. Truly valuable science writing (of which this volume contains some examples) considers the important concepts, not just the horse-race nature of political controversy attending them.
The vital need for intelligent science writing has collided with the economics of contracting print and broadcast news media to make such a valuable commodity more difficult to find. The twitterization of discourse (and many media outlets, including some of the new stars of the Internet) also favors facile opinion over the kind of analytical thought required to make science understandable to large numbers of people. One can hope that books such as this one will help to foster interest in science education among a new generation whose members will, in coming decades, find themselves compelled by a need to interpret a world shaped increasingly by scientific discovery, technological change, and environmental crisis.
BRUCE E. JOHANSEN
University of Nebraska at Omaha