Newspaper science reporters are more endangered than black rhinos or giant pandas. The Los Angeles Times and Newsday and have dismantled their once-sizable staffs of expert science journalists. In February the Boston Globe closed its science and health section. Recently CNN disbanded its science unit, dismissing one of America's preeminent TV science journalists, Miles O'Brien. One newsmagazine, having cut some of its best science writers, now runs stories on its website provided by the government, disguised as news. At a science journalism awards ceremony, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting last month in Chicago, the winners in the newspaper category both noted that they no longer had jobs.
--Tom Siegfried, Editor-in-Chief, Science News, March 28, 2009
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