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What's Metanews?

21stC believes that the process by which research stories become news is, itself, newsworthy. Our column Metanews -- "news about the news" -- focuses attention on this process. What research projects have attracted press attention, and why? Has a new finding been overpublicized? ignored? distorted? presented fairly and responsibly? In mediating between researchers and the general public, have the media done justice to both? Look to Metanews for informed discussion of these questions.

For more journalism resources and media criticism, look here.


Metanews from Issue 4.2, Fall 1999

The demon in the freezer? Alibek book returns spotlight to bioterror
Foodborne infections? Didn't anyone know?

Metanews from Issue 4.1, Spring 1999

Jefferson and Hemings: History hangs on haplotype hype
"Dr. Death" terminal; will end-of-life research thrive?

Metanews from Issue 3.4, Winter 1999

After the Nobel, the fractional quantum reportorial effect
Online blues? Other researchers see red

Metanews from Issue 3.3, Fall 1998

It really won't HRT a bit
AZT trials in the Third World: Tuskegee redux or cheap shot?

Metanews from Issue 3.2, Spring 1998

Run for your lives! (Uh, never mind.)
Media contagion: botching the science behind the bioterror headlines

Metanews from Issue 3.1, Winter 1998

Better children through chemistry?
Press turns deaf ear to beneficial uses of tobacco
Scapegoating tenure, or, What the media did and didn't learn in Econ 101

Metanews from Issue 2.4, Fall 1997

You say managed, I say mangled, let's call the whole thing off?
Bloomsgate
Space stories steal the spotlight

Metanews from Issue 2.3, Spring 1997

Can't the press do something besides clone around?
Mammography in the media: covering the absence of consensus
Black English becomes magnet for misunderstandings

Metanews from Issue 2.2, Winter 1997

Nobelist Vickrey: the ideas behind the human-interest story
Controversial book spotlights core courses
Recovered memories: hot buttons and lukewarm evidence

Metanews from Issue 2.1, Fall 1996 (Special Issue, "Biospheres")

Mad, bad, and difficult to cover: BSE in the media
Earthshaking story! Film at eleven!

Metanews from Issue 1.4, Spring 1996

Enteric "second brain" in the gut
First Amendment: bulldozed off the Infobahn?
Silicone studies, sensationalism and stats

Metanews from Issue 1.3, Winter 1996

Biosphere's rise and fall
A historian's compendium
Heart attacks from the news?

Metanews from Issue 1.2, Fall 1995

Cyberporn study
Airborne Ebola?
Antiscience conference

Metanews from Issue 1.1, Spring 1995

The KS virus story
Global climate change
Soft science
Doctors' free speech
The last theorem
Breast cancer brouhaha
Modernist culture clash


For anyone interested in journalism, media criticism, or the interface between the media and the academic world, here are a few more links:


We invite further suggestions for links, and we welcome crosslinks between your site and ours. Please write to the Editors with your comments.