Text Versus Subtext

The Loom
By Carl Zimmer
Sep 13, 2005 8:01 PMNov 5, 2019 4:52 AM

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(Warning: this post contains some journalistic/blogging inside-baseball material.)

Back in the dark ages (otherwise known as the 1990s), writing about science felt a bit like putting messages in a bottle. I'd write an article, a few weeks or months later it would appear in a magazine, and a few weeks or months later I might get a response from a reader. In some cases, an expert might point out an error I made. In other cases, she or he might explain the real story which I had missed. The delay could make for some disconcerting experiences. The first time I met the late Stephen Jay Gould, to interview him for a book I was working on, I was still lowering myself into a chair when he began complaining about the cover headline to a story I had written about fossil birds over a year beforehand. I stared at him blankly for a while as I reached back into my memory banks to figure out what he was talking about.

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