Early this morning, The Guardian launched their brand new science blogging network, adding another shiny new island to the growing archipelago of the science blogging universe.
Alok Jha introduces the network:
You would not know it from general media coverage but, on the web, science is alive with remarkable debate. According to the Pew Research Centre, science accounts for 10% of all stories on blogs but only 1% of the stories in mainstream media coverage. (The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at a year’s news coverage starting from January 2009.)
On the web, thousands of scientists, journalists, hobbyists and numerous other interested folk write about and create lively discussions around palaeontology, astronomy, viruses and other bugs, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, evolutionary biology, extraterrestrial life or bad science. For regular swimmers in this fast-flowing river of words, it can be a rewarding (and sometimes maddening) experience. For the uninitiated, it can be overwhelming.
The Guardian’s science blogs network is an attempt to bring some of the expertise and these discussions to our readers. Our four bloggers will bring you their untrammeled thoughts on the the latest in evolution and ecology, politics and campaigns, skepticism (with a dollop of righteous anger) and particle physics (I’ll let them make their own introductions).
The four initial bloggers (apart from Alok who will continue blogging on the already well-known Guardian ScienceBlog) are Martin Robbins, Jon Butterworth, Evan Harris and my old friend and SciBling GrrlScientist.
So, subscribe to their RSS feed and their Twitter list and their official Twitter account, then go and post Hello comments on their blogs.
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“According to the Pew Research Centre, science accounts for 10% of all stories on blogs but only 1% of the stories in mainstream media coverage.”
WOW. This is a very big deal to me. all sorts of questions to ask and answer.
It is interesting that the internet is reacting to a percentage of Sblings leaving Sb.com as an extinction event that left open niches to occupy.
I’m certain there was no such extinction event … just one year or so worth of movement out in a few weeks, which is a bit shocking and not balanced by new Sblings but still…
I’m also sure that these niches that are being probed were there before, and may well be open spaces or at least, openable spaces. It will be interesting to see what novel designs emerge.
Not an extinction event, but definitely an opening of space, new niches to be filled. The MSM used to check Last24H page on scienceblogs.com to see a snapshot of what is going on in the world of science. Now, with so many equivalent spaces, the MSM will have to use Scienceblogging.org to get such a snapshot.
What is the MSM?
Main-Stream Media (aka Corporate Media, or Traditional Media, or Legacy Media).
Oh, right. For a second I panicked and thought it was something about Microsoft!
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I think what’s now needed is some sort of aggregator of science blogs. Something like the Last 24 Hours function on Science Blogs, but across the various disparate blogging platforms. Does anyone think this is feasible?
Further to what I suggested above, I’ve now come across your other post where it seems someone’s already done it!
For the benefit of others, it’s at http://scienceblogging.org/
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