Things haven’t been so good at our beloved local paper, the Boston Globe. After several rounds of cost-cutting measures (layoffs/buyouts), the paper’s science section finally fell victim. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the Globe cut its weekly science section last week.

The science reporters still get to keep their jobs though. Their stories will appear in other parts of the paper. Still, considering how much good science happens in Beantown, it’s sad to see the section go.

A Nature Network member, Angela Saini (who flagged this up on her blog, thanks, Angela!) has started a discussion here on NN about how to save science journalism. So please post your thoughts there.

My take: I don’t think science journalism per se is being threatened. Newspaper journalism, yes. But science journalism in general I think is still strong. It’s just changing in form, media, style, etc. (as Angela says on her blog post, it’s thriving online). We journalists need to be smart and bold enough to figure out new ways of getting those stories out, while also figuring out how to make money doing this—or at least, cover our costs.

The business of making money from journalism I think is what’s in jeopardy. Maybe there will come a time when journalism will be seen to be a public service, funded by government or philanthropy, and not as a for-profit enterprise. Given that we’ve let the genie out of the bottle by giving away stories online for free for so long now (so that readers don’t feel like they should have to pay for them), maybe going towards a nonprofit model is one way to keep journalism alive.