Janet Raloff

Janet Raloff

Editor, Digital, Science News Explores

Editor Janet Raloff has been a part of the Science News Media Group since 1977. While a staff writer at Science News, she covered the environment, toxicology, energy, science policy, agriculture and nutrition. She was among the first to give national visibility to such issues as electromagnetic pulse weaponry and hormone-mimicking pollutants, and was the first anywhere to report on the widespread tainting of streams and groundwater sources with pharmaceuticals. A founding board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, her writing has won awards from groups including the National Association of Science Writers. In July 2007, while still writing for Science News, Janet took over Science News Explores (then known as Science News for Kids) as a part-time responsibility. Over the next six years, she expanded the magazine's depth, breadth and publication cycle. Since 2013, she also oversaw an expansion of its staffing from three part-timers to a full-time staff of four and a freelance staff of some 35 other writers and editors. Before joining Science News, Janet was managing editor of Energy Research Reports (outside Boston), a staff writer at Chemistry (an American Chemical Society magazine) and a writer/editor for Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Initially an astronomy major, she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (with an elective major in physics).

All Stories by Janet Raloff

  1. Humans

    How Would Carnegie Judge Our Digital Libraries?

    As the nature of "modern" libraries change, one digital designer questions whether libraries are losing much more than just hard copies of their books.

  2. Humans

    Digital Data Cry Out — Save Me!

    Despite being make-or-break issues, how to collect, store, and catalog digital data are on the radar screens of few scientists and engineers.

  3. Science & Society

    Confirmed: Big Dipper to Get Doritos

    A European astronomy group beamed a video of a Doritos sacrifice to the god of salsa at a possible alien race in a star system associated with the Big Dipper.

  4. Humans

    Doritos in Space

    Today, a huge European radar-transmitter system sent an ad for a cheesy snack radiating out into space.

  5. Humans

    Wash Your Veggies!

    The lesson in all of these food-poisoning outbreaks is that we must not expect a risk-free food-supply chain.

  6. Humans

    Teacher Certification Increases, But . . .

    Rigorous standards exist for what teachers should know and be able to do. The rub: only about three U.S. teachers out of every five schools have demonstrated they meet those standards.

  7. Climate

    Polar Bear Fallout

    Why fights are likely to break out in the next few months to years between industry, environmental advocates, and the feds as regulations are developed, and litigated, over how to conserve declining numbers of polar bears.

  8. Climate

    Science academies call for climate action

    Thirteen national academies of science today called on world leaders to “to limit the threat of climate change.” Read more in the current Science & the Public blog by Janet Raloff.

  9. Humans

    ARISE and Invest in New Talent

    A new report argues strongly for investing more in graduate students and early-career researchers.

  10. Agriculture

    Federal Research Censorship

    The media-affairs office in federal agencies can be fairly obstructionist, and when they do, the public comes out the loser.

  11. Agriculture

    Green Living, Chinese-Style

    Chinese is developing eco-cities to take their citizens straight from the agricultural to the ecological age.

  12. Health & Medicine

    A Faulty Eye Witness: Hallucinations

    Treatment for Oliver Sacks' cancer damaged an eye and triggered something he never expected: his brain to display things that simply didn’t exist.