Tag Archives: investigative journalism

Freelancers take the flak

TWO years before reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s serial abuse spawned the global #MeToo movement, Michael Balter, a science journalist, was already covering issues of sexual misconduct in the sciences. He’s pursued several dozen investigations into sexual harassment at major scientific institutions, published in Science magazine, The Verge, and his own blog, where he works for no pay. (He detailed his reasons for shifting his #MeToo reporting to his blog for CJR in 2019.) In June 2020, Danielle Kurin, an archaeologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, sued Balter for defamation after he published a series of blog posts about allegations of Title IX violations and sexual misconduct against her and her former husband, respectively. She’s asking for $18 million in damages…

This article first appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review on 28 April 2021. To continue reading, click here.