2016 in Articles

Okay, as 2016 turns into 2017 I find myself struck with two powerful revelations.

A) I am really, really bad at updating this blog.

and

B) I am really, really happy about the writing that I did during this past year.

I wrote and published 236 articles in 2016 -- that's down from 248 in 2015 -- covering as endangered species, climate change, new technologies, science careers, comic books and other topics. Most of those articles were written for Scientific American, TakePart and various IEEE publications, which kept me pretty busy, but I also wrote for PBS's Nature, Audubon, Sierra, Hakai, Slate, Vice/Motherboard and several trade publications. I'm happy to say that I didn't take a single assignment just for the money. I enjoyed working on everything and feel that the work I did this past year not only mattered but helped to add to the conversation on many important topics.

As I usually do at this point, here's a list of 20 of my favorite articles from the past year, in the order that they were published:

1. The Surprising (and Mostly Legal) Trade in "Mermaid Ivory"
2. How Do You Save an Elephant’s Tusk? Ask a Materials Engineer
3. Endangered Hawaiian Bird Immortalized In Space
4. What Happened When I Pushed Myself to Interview More Women
5. Drones' New Mission: Save the Forests
6. Preaching Against Extinction
7. Turtle Voyeurs
8. Wildlife Tourism Faces Dark Days—but Revenue Soars
9. Why People Keep Taking Deadly Selfies With Animals
10. Firefly Populations Are Blinking Out
11. Scientists’ New Research Tool: Pokémon Go  
12. Is It Ethical to Kill Poachers?
13. Snails Are Going Extinct: Here's Why That Matters
14. The Amazing Biodiversity within an Elephant's Footprint
15. A New Weapon in the War Against Climate Change Denial: Laughter
16. How to Craft a Winning Elevator Speech
17. Snow Leopard Conservation Gets Boost from New Tech
18. How Do You Stop a Marauding Bull Elephant Named Trump? Send in the Drones
19. Vote for Biodiversity
20. How High Schoolers’ Hacks Fixed a Whale Snot-Collecting Drone

(That's a pretty good list, but there were a lot of other gems in the mix. You can find links to everything that I published last year here.)

In addition to all of the above I also appeared on several radio shows and podcasts, had my work translated into Spanish, did some blogging here and there, tweeted a lot, and wrote dozens of ideas for gag cartoons that I will get around to drawing one of these days.

One more note about this year's articles: you may recall my discussion earlier this year about trying to achieve gender parity in my sources. Here's how it all broke down. I interviewed a total of 331 people in 2016. 197 of them were men (59.5%), 134 were women (40.5%). That's not quite the 50-50 I had hoped for, but it's still pretty good (and much better than most journalists, especially in the sciences).

Well, that's the year that was. 2017 is bound to hold all kinds of exciting challenges and opportunities, so I (for one) look forward to what comes out of my keyboard in the months ahead.

For now, though, thank you for reading. As always, I couldn't do any of this without my friends and readers who make all of this possible.