The New Science Journalism

I do not intend what follows to be a manifesto, so forgive me if it turns into something approaching one. It’s perhaps more of a letter to myself or a conversation I’m having out loud about The Future.1 This is likely not that conversation’s final form. This is still atomic; the cells have barely begun to aggregate; sentience is a ways off.

I’ve just spent the past six months in a science journalism residency at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies. I’ve lived without the pressures of freelance science journalism for 180-odd days. Hardly pitching, only a few deadlines, not a worry about rent or (all that much) imposter syndrome shadowing me whenever I sit down. The Dream, basically.

Six months is a long time to think about things! This is what human beings used to do before we pressed our nose to the plexiglass of a smartphone and gawked at worlds we could not touch, worlds that exist mostly in 7-second scenes. That sounds too manifesto-y… Let’s switch it up.

Perhaps it’s better to just start with the question. The question I’ve been thinking about a lot. Simply — Science Journalism: Where now?

Yes, I unabashedly stole this question from Kieron Gillen’s essay “The New Games Journalism”, which is now more than 20 years old. I’m not sure how many subscribers read old games journalism discourse but I suspect it’s less than five of you, so let’s briefly touch on TNGJ.2

When Gillen wrote his essay (March 23, 2004, around 2am (no he was not drunk, apparently (and nor am I right now thank you very much))), the internet had not yet buried the magazine industry. BUT games magazines were on the decline. There were signs The Magpocalypse was coming. The Four Horsemen here — Free Content, Clickbait, Number-Go-Up and Pivot-to-Video3 — were lurking just around the corner. Gillen’s essay posits the Money Men, those most shadowy of figures behind every publication, were worried about this. And, he suggested, they weren’t all that interested in combatting this problem with Quality Journalism.

Nope! They were sitting in their smoky boardrooms thinking about ways to increase the Quantity of Journalism for the lowest possible cost — and if they couldn’t do that, well, they would just shutter the whole thing anyway, because who needs it.

We know, at least in video games, that the Money Men won, though there are survivors.4

The thesis of Gillen’s essay comes about half way through and about half way down the webpage, which, I assure many editors I’ve worked with, is definitely a place that exists and that people will actually scroll down to.5

Here is that thesis:

It’s a delightful coincidence that Gillen would use something STEM-adjacent here: the idea of games being hallucinogens and a little bit about binding reactions and brain sites (I think the analogy doesn’t work or is maybe a little confused but that’s just me).

I do like the idea that journalists can write about what it feels like as the chemicals kick in and reality is remixed around you.

Because reality is remixed by science all the time. Not in a digital hallucinogens sense, either; it is not virtual or simulated remixing. We’re constantly remixing and reformulating how we understand the world. That’s the beauty and power of the scientific endeavour — and that rules! That’s just really fucking cool. And that remixing is happening because of human beings, who bring their own wants and experiences and hopes and flaws to the process too.

Where video game journalism grew its legs and slithered out of the Primordial Swamp of Trade Magazines with a focus on guiding consumers to consume things around half a century ago, science journalism arose without that baggage, much earlier. It doesn’t have to sell you anything! It exists almost entirely to move knowledge from one place to another. All that information about processes and ideas and hypotheses and discovery from a lab bench to the public. It also exists to shine a light on when those processes go wrong, to capture the spirit and awe of the natural world, to better society — yes, really! — by providing the populace with the evidence-based information that underlies our shared reality.

But it’s dying.

In Gillen’s time, the threat was that the Money Men would hire up young journalists, fresh from university, and burn through them every year or two, giving them little time or resources to do great work. The journalists would leave defeated, the machine would keep turning. In 2025, the threat is that the Money Men use a single salary (less?) on generative AI, LLMs and whatever hallucinating supercharged predictive text tool they can get their hands on to simply replace the journalists at the bottom of the food chain.

And they will be able to do this. Because there is one uncomfortable fact we must confront: A large amount of science journalism that reaches the public is … Not Great, or at the very least, it is largely useless; empty calories in a media diet. This stuff I would call “Popular Science Journalism” and it’s everywhere (Think “Asteroid approaching Earth at 23000kmph, NASA says!” and “[New Thing Discovered], But Scientists Have No Idea What It Is!”). Often, these stories focus on a single study, with little context, feature copy-pasted quotes from a press release and, maybe the journalist didn’t even read the paper. They can be boiled down to “interesting discovery” which, look, fine! There’s news there! But in a world without algorithms to please, many of these pieces would never be written. In the time of Regular Newspapers, which I caught the tail of, I imagine these stories either didn’t make it to print or, if they did, they were tiny boxes in the corner of the paper.

Though a tiny percentage of the blame for our Popular Science Journalism lies with the writers, the enemy here are those Money Men and their successors, Big Tech Oligarchs and All-consuming Algorithms that have flattened the beautiful geography of our media ecosystem, and the internet itself, down to desolate plains. It must also, in part, lie with the press release clearing houses and PR and marketing teams that control the flow of What’s Hot in Science This Week.

There is no tillable earth here, just content ground to dust while the emaciated husks of journalists shuffle from one deadline to the next to hit higher highs on Chartbeat and Google Analytics.7 You’re only getting minimum wage? Damn! Please file 600 words on the latest paper about Asian civet cat shit by Thursday! What do you mean that’s tomorrow? I don’t care, it better be on my desk in 15 minutes!

And yes, saying that does make me an arrogant wanker — especially given some of the rubbish I’ve written — but the truth is: If I’m wrong and science journalism is going to be just fine as is and this is what our audiences want, then this whole, unsightly screed means bugger all. It’s just another silly opinion on the internet and no, it’s not about you. But… if I’m right, and science journalism’s fate is now clutched in the palm of a precariously perched slimy creature above the fires of Mount Doom, then what the hell are we going to do about all this?

“Interesting discovery” is simply not enough. Or if it was, it isn’t any more.

Because what these stories do is reduce the scientific process down to a moment in time. An ephemeral thing. “We found this!” becomes “They found this!” and shortly after, we return to your regularly scheduled slop.

New Science Journalism rejects this notion and says the worth is not in the discovery or the output, but in the process.

I think the only thing we can do is lean into both the mechanics of remixing reality and revealing the ways in which that remixing affects us — how it affects everyone. There is some level of objectivity we’re likely going to have to sacrifice here, some level of analysis we must provide beyond whatever ChatGPT can fart out in a few minutes. If we’re all writing about civet cat shit because that’s what Springer Nature found most exciting this week, then I think we’re not going far enough.8

I’m not arguing we stop writing 600 word pieces on single studies, though I do believe this work will disappear and we must do it better, particularly if we are trying to encourage young science journalists to enter the field. And, no, I don’t want to see a more traditional science-focused publication like Scientific American or New Scientist or Australia’s science magazine oh wait we don’t have that RetractionWatch falter or fizzle out by switching to 4,000 word mega investigations only, either. What I am asking for here is a shift in focus.

A commitment to New Science Journalism. (which is not new at all, I am just committed to the bit now, thanks Gillen!!!)

Kathryn Schulz’s “The Really Big One” is a perfect example of it. Charles Piller’s investigations into dodgy brain research, also. There’s great stuff being done in Australia by the Age and Sydney Morning Herald around where research funding goes, and where research misconduct occurs. And sure, pull up anything by Ed Yong in the last half decade, of course. You’ll find more than just “Interesting Discovery” in these pieces. You will find humanity and connection and striving and failure and a hell of a lot of uncertainty. You will find these are windows into the scientific process. You will see how knowledge has built up and why it has built up this way. You will understand how reality is remixed.

We must explore that.

Thanks for reading no breakthroughs.! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Maybe all I am asking for here is just a little more ambition, a little more chutzpah, a little more courage from our Big Publications. I’m asking to reject KPIs and Google Search and create for the sake of creating. That’s the magic stuff right there. I’ve been able to find myself in a place where I can (sometimes, rarely, fleetingly) find that magic, get the excitement of writing the stuff that requires weeks or months to get right, the stuff that gets you off the content treadmill. That New Science Journalism feel. Again, arrogant wanker. I get it.9

The definitely-old-but-totally New Science Journalism must emphasize that science is not merely relaying facts from the latest study to the public. It is instead a process that is deeply intertwined with the people that perform it. Science, god damn it, is story. I know that sounds wanky, but it is! It just is! When we write about science and scientists and research, we’re writing about how we’ve remixed reality just a little bit, shifting the atoms a few nanometres. There’s a story there.

So to boil it down:

1. The worth of science lies in the process of discovery, not the moment of discovery.
2. Write stories about how reality is remixed and what that means to people. Including yourself.

Oh yeah, and always read the damn paper.