Chandra found the youngest supernova remnant in our Galaxy recently, but where did you hear it first?
I’m working on my presentation for the .Astronomy conference in September and I was wondering how many of you get (most of) your astronomy news direct from the source. I’m interested because it seems (to me at least) that more people nowadays go straight to the actual press release, for a given news story, than they use to. Is a press release really a press release anymore? So my questions are then…do you read the actual press releases when the news comes out? If you do, how much to you read about that story in ‘new’ media like blogs, Twitter etc. as well? Drop your answers in the comments for this post, I’ll be interested to see the feedback. Meanwhile you can visit the conference website here.
it really depends! things like NASA mission updates, e.g. from Mars Phoenix in recent weeks, I’ll look up directly from the source. many other astronomy stories I might see in the news, and often I’ll find out who the authors are and look up the paper on astro-ph (rather than the original press release) so I can judge it for myself. I find the press releases are often not very well written and I don’t find them that informative…
i get my astronomy news before the press release ;)
actually, its hard to say what its like. I was at ASP/AAS last week and there was much talk among a particular crowd about blogs. Its seems that the usual astronomy blogs (the ones you keep on your blog roll) tend to act as a main source for many people. But, yes, the press release are well disseminated these days with the help of the internet.
I tend to visit the BBC’s news site on a daily basis and always click on the Science section. Astronomy news tends to dominate that section.
I learned of the Chandra news through conversation.
Good luck with your talk.
Amit
Well, when fishing around for stories, I usually check out places like Digg.com – lots of eyes looking for material there, plus you can gauge the interest in certain articles. I wouldn’t suggest this for major articles or original posts, but social bookmarking sites do create a vast, dynamic library of information.
However, assuming I need to research a specific story, I’ll follow the online trail (including any preprints, arXiv entries and press releases) and see if I have enough material. In a few cases I’ve been frustrated by a lack of “uniqueness” so I’ve directly contacted scientists to answer my questions, rather than just the generic points (taking Phoenix for example – a saturated subject during the runup to the landing – I made contact with the public relations officer and asked her opionion. Was very interesting!).
Well, that’s what I do anyway – but the cool thing I’m finding with blogging is that you not only report on the news, by voicing your opinion and looking for alternate articles, you are creating the news! Really bizarre.
Anyhow, I hope that helps!
Cheers, Ian :)
I get it from the arXiv.
I have some RSS feeds set up to general science sites that feature stuff, but I’m fairly new to gleaning news from the internet.
I get mine from the blogs I read regularly – though I often follow any links through to the press release.
Most often, I hear first from other bloggers (mostly the Bad Astronomer). Second to that, I’ll hear from websites like Space Ref, Space.com, etc… I’ll typically skim those articles if they seem interesting and then maybe go to the press release or straight to the journal itself.
Most of the things I’ve written about for my blog have tended to be directly from journals. I skim them pretty often for interesting stuff and bypass the press and releases all together.
I use the press releases as the main tool in my journalistic belt, but I’m also keen on blogs and space news sites for information that doesn’t come in a press release.
But assuming I am interested in a release, I will always try and track down the primary source (i.e. a study) to make sure that, in the release, there’s no hype, to check out the numbers/figures/conclusions, to find experts not associated with the study (i.e. the references section) and most importantly for the pieces of info that the release left out.
Hope this helps, and let me know if you need more!