find a substantive article on an issue facing the marine environment.There are many threats to the oceans: overfishing, microplastics, oil spills, dead zones, acidification, and so on. There are many good sources for news and
information about these topics.
Please avoid the short articles that you will find at web sources like Science Daily. Science Daily is an aggregating service; it collects press releases by
institutions that are promoting themselves and it reproduces and disseminates them unaltered. Frankly, some Science Daily articles play fast and loose with the
science. For this assignment, I would prefer to see actual journalism that explores an issue from multiple angles and sources.
Similar sources would be Scientific American (Links to an external site.), Science News (Links to an external site.), and the “news” articles in professional journals
like Science (Links to an external site.) and Nature (Links to an external site.). Good long-form science articles can be found in general news sources like Time
(Links to an external site.) and Newsweek (Links to an external site.). Some nonprofit organization also have good information on marine science, including National
Geographic (Links to an external site.) and Audubon Magazine (Links to an external site.).
Please avoid sources with an anti-science or “junk science” agenda that aims to dishonestly discredit environmental concerns.
As far as length, look for articles with a minimum of 2000 words. TO give you an idea of how long this would be, the article I used as an example, from The Scientist,
comes in just short of 3000 words. However, no matter the length, make sure your article addresses the issue seriously with good journalism and science, without any
hidden agendas.
So, to summarize, find an article on an environmental issue affecting the marine environment
from a reliable source
at least 2000 words long
that examines the issue thoroughly
is written for a general audience (is NOT peer reviewed or primary literature)
is NOT from Science Daily or any other PR aggregating service
is not from a primarily political source that is promoting an anti-science agenda, hidden or not.
