"Electric Shock" by Cynthia Graber. Published by Matter. $0.99. Available online and for Kindle, iPad, and others.
by Seth Mnookin
Last spring, Jim Giles and Bobbie Johnson, a pair of British journalists who'd written for everywhere from The New York Times and The Guardian to Economist and Wired, announced their intention to launch Matter. It felt, to many of us in the science-writing racket, like a quixotic effort: Was there really pent-up demand for in-depth, independent reportage that covered breaking news about science within the parameters of long-form non-fiction?
To answer 'yes' to that question required ignoring decades-long secular trends in journalism. Legacy news organizations ranging from CNN to my hometown paper, The Boston Globe, have been jettisoning specialized science reporters since the late 1990s. As profits disappeared and newsroom budgets shrank, "in-depth" projects became rarer and rarer. This is hardly a surprise. Nuanced, investigative reports have always been the equivalent of newsroom money pits: They require (relatively) highly paid reporters and editors, they don't produce a lot of copy relative to the amount of effort needed, and they don't typically deal with subjects advertisers want to be associated with. (Can you think of any companies that'd be eager to pitch their wares alongside this excellent Times series on the abuse of developmentally disabled patients in New York State group homes? Me neither.)
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