All Things

Astroprof’s Page has an interesting discussion of the difficulties of science journalism.

I think the quality of science coverage is improving at many of the major newspapers at least. As Astroprof mentions, Mark Carreau has, for example, done a good job for the Houston Chronicle. Perhaps it’s a positive outcome from the Challenger tragedy, but it seems that about that time many of the media outlets here in Houston started giving a lot more attention to manned spaceflight. The “main” industries in Houston have long been oil & gas and real estate, but for quite a few years now space has also been accorded that sort of status by the Chronicle and several of the TV and radio stations.

An experienced, knowledgeable science reporter is hard to replace. I subscribed to Science News for years, but after Dietrick Thomsen and Jonathan Eberhart left, the physics and space coverage were just not the same. I doubt most publishers have the means to get into a bidding war for the limited supply of top talent, and no one could expect a relatively new science journalist to be able to match their reporting.

One of the problems with science and tech journalism is that folks in these fields often expect journalists to do all the work. Such a mindset would seem ridiculous in politics, where there’s whole staffs of hacks feeding carefully-crafted sound bites to the media and identifying “talking points” for their candidate’s every appearance.

Businesses likewise spend vast amounts on marketing and public relations, but most researchers, and even technical staff inside many businesses, somehow don’t seem to think these functions are part of their job. Of course, a lot of engineers, scientists and programmers aren’t that good at communications skills, or just plain don’t like to talk about themselves, but somebody in these research groups and engineering departments needs to take up the role of communicator, so the outside world can understand the value and needs of their efforts.

Journalists are under a lot of pressure with the kind of deadlines that most of us couldn’t even imagine, so it’s only smart to realize they’re going to need some help. That’s one of the things I’m trying to do with some of my sites, particularly AeroGo (for aerospace and engineering education) and RealCurrents (for current events), in which I’m trying to provide important but little-known background information and to point out things deserving more attention (which I generally categorize with the tag “Press Coverage Holes”).

Where there are failings in science/tech journalism, beyond just ignorantly trying to cover a field the reporter knows nothing about, I’d say that one of the biggest problems is that of naively swallowing pronouncements from big research groups without knowing what is going on elsewhere. We saw some of that a few years ago, for example, with some coverage of the Human Genome Project, that focussed too much on the government research, ignoring Celera Genomics’ private effort that ended up getting done first.

The result is that journalists are often lacking in understanding about the overall policy and business aspects of research, and consequently end up focussing too critically on superficial technical aspects. We saw that just this past week, when many media outlets were talking about the possible abandoning of the International Space Station, due to computer problems - what was a rather remote possibility, technically, while saying not a word about how NASA’s busily going about building a station they expect to abandon anyway, not too many years after completing it.

It seems to me that journalists ought to be a little easier on programs that suffer technical glitches that are really just part of the normal course of research & development, but be discerning enough to realize when an effort has really lost its way or when a policy has serious unresolved issues. With so much needless technical criticism, a lot of R&D managers are understandably gun-shy about the press, which just perpetuates the disconnect to journalists described above.

I wrote recently at AeroGo about Inexpensive Ways to Start Learning to Fly. I cover a number of ways to get started, such as the EAA’s Young Eagle Program, Discovery Flights, the Civil Air Patrol, BEAPILOT, and Cessna Pilot Centers.

For those not quite ready to hop in a plane, I also mentioned a number of good publications to check out, such as Flying magazine, AOPA Pilot, Plane & Pilot, etc., as well as some good sources for video/DVD pilot courses. There’s also a link to EAA’s AeroScholars online educational program.

To make the most of this ongoing discussion, see my suggestions from last time.

I’ve begun to tackle the subject of flight instruction on my site AeroGo, so if any of you out there have always toyed with the idea of learning to fly, you might want to see this post and then check back every once in a while.

Better yet, get a Xanga account and then subscribe, and you can get an email alert every time AeroGo is updated.

In this first post, I discuss some of the basic issues involved in choosing among the many schools and flying clubs, etc. that offer flying lessons.

I also note how options are expanding and costs likely heading down as a result of the new sport pilot/light sport aircraft rules, and there’s a number of helpful links for more info on these changes, as well as sites that can help you locate a flight instructor or flying club.

It’s been a very busy month and I’ve got a lot of things to write about, mostly small items worth mentioning. Hopefully I can get to several of these over the next few days. One thing I’ve been wondering about is what effect the rapid growth in investor interest in MySpace is going to have on other social network and blogging sites.

When the business press writes about social networking, they usually identify three sites - MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga - as the big three. I’ve really only spent much time on Xanga, where I have my site AeroGo.

AeroGo is the site I’m most interested in driving traffic to, and so inevitably I’ve been wondering how much the increased investor interest is likely to impact Xanga. They seem like an obvious candidate for acquisition, considering the valuation MySpace got from News Corp.

Well, today when I looked on AeroGo, instead of the usual message asking me to upgrade to Xanga Premium, there’s this:

“WE’RE HIRING!

Xanga is looking for a few good programmers and systems people to join the Xanga Team. Click here to apply. ”

This is an encouraging sign, I guess, that the Xanga folks are looking to increase the offerings of their site. It seems to me that there’s certainly more potential there, especially with the Blogrings, though these need to be cleaned up and tended to some extent, to get the worst of the silly stuff out.

One thing that bothered me about Xanga was the seemingly exclusive nature of a social networking site, i.e., that it was only for casual/social and not more interest/topic-oriented interaction. I wanted to do something specific to aerospace, and at least to some extent network with people interested in this topic, but it seemed almost too “serious” for a social networking site.

So far, AeroGo seems to have been pretty well received by the members of various Xanga aerospace-related blogrings (see to the left of my page for some of the best). I’ve even had a few very nice and grateful comments, which were certainly encouraging.

As I’ve noted, I think there’s a lot more potential with sites like Xanga and MySpace. MySpace apparently is oriented mainly toward music and dating (though the latter may prove problematic, and the site is now in the news frequently over concerns in this area). Facebook is positioned around college, and now high school, communities. Xanga obviously needs its own particular niche as well.

In this regard, I was surprised to read that Xanga’s goal initially was to provide a place for writers to “publish their work on the Net.” Now I wonder if perhaps I had Xanga figured out right after all.

Of course, Xanga has limitations, and I’m now working on a more extensive hosted AeroGo site, though I’ll keep AeroGo Xanga as a way to connect with those who are interested. Nevertheless, I wonder if Xanga’s best focus would be as a topical networking site, for hobbies, education and careers, rather than music or school.

Another thing I’ve been suspecting, but don’t really know how to confirm, is that more folks beyond the college years are getting interested in social networking sites, and that many are feeling more comfortable with Xanga. This is something investors might want to consider, especially since the out-of-school population is a lot bigger and generally has more spending power.

I’ve held off mentioning this until I had several posts on it, but I’ve recently started a Xanga blog, AeroGo, that may be helpful to anyone interested in the aerospace field, especially high school and college folks.

I’m going to use the site to give out information about the aerospace field that could help those trying to make educational and/or career choices. It will be very practical, tell-it-like-it-is stuff, what may be hard to discover for those not already in the field. My aim is to give readers exposure to a lot of stuff they might not hear about otherwise, but could benefit from knowing.

I picked Xanga because it has a pretty well-developed blogring setup that allows me to connect with a number of different aerospace interest groups in that community. Of course, if you know someone who might be interested, I’d appreciate your pointing them to my site.

Today I discussed some of the new crop of space companies that may give NASA a real run for their money, and eventually move commercial space into manned spaceflight.

I’ve decided to cover the subject of homeschooling (and maybe all of education) in my personal blog, Light Side, rather than here. So if you’re interested, check out the Education category there.