J-Topics

Journalism professor David Secko and researcher Wendy Smith are leading the Concordia Science Journalism Project, which aims to help journalists discriminate between good research and bad by collecting stories from scientists and the reporters who cover them.

Science journalism – one of the most labour-intensive (and, therefore, expensive) specialized beats – has always been at high risk of being under-serviced in news organizations.The current wave of industry cutbacks isn’t boding well for its future. CNN’s decision to axe its entire science unit is the latest example. This has scientists worried how best to ensure public access to quality journalism on hot topics like climate or health. 

With commercial news organizations failing to support the science writers on full-time beats, is it time for...

Remember your elementary school atlas? The Atlas of Canada offers an amazing array of maps that can graphically represent complex data in a manner that may be more readily digestible than text or charts.

Most commonly used by educators and other professionals, the maps are available to journalists (both broadcast and print) for re-publication. Clearance rights are available by contacting Natural Resources Canada and can take as long as a couple of weeks.

Some scientists focus on a wider mission.  Some like to hack. Johnny Lee does both - he wants expensive technology accessible to wider audiences and his hacks of the Nintendo Wii remote (broadcast through u-tube videos) have made him famous.

This TED video (a U.S. speaker series) of the Carnegie-Mellon graduate student demonstrates his creation of an interactive white board (typically a few thousand dollars) for little more than $50 of hardware. He made the software public and in three months, it was downloaded for free over 500,000 times.