Danger: Journalists reporting science/engineering

Well, the problem here may be that there was no reporting. So complains Daniel Grossman in an e-mail and at his blog. And he's right. CNN, especially, went a little ga ga over this diamond-shaped airship concept from design firm Seymourpowell (beware, the site is entirely in Flash), which ever so helpfully provided high-res images on its Web site for folks to grab.



A look at the CNN story shows how much outside reporting -- aside from talking to someone at Seymourpowell? Lets' see. Oh. ... None. But there are some really sweeeeeet images.

Not to fear. Grossman slices, dices and dissects what he calls a nice piece of "journalism fail." I'd tend to agree.

Look, I have no problem reporting this stuff - people should see where advanced minds are thinking of going, and I did many such stories myself. But it needs leavening. Maybe parts of this are actually stuff we might see in the future. But it takes reporting to figure that out.