Undark Magazine
Online magazine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Undark Magazine is a nonprofit online publication exploring science as a "frequently wondrous, sometimes contentious, and occasionally troubling byproduct of human culture."[1] The name Undark is a deliberate reference to a radium-based luminous paint product called Undark that ultimately proved toxic, if not deadly for those who handled it.[1][2][3]
 Undark logo | |
Website type | digital magazine |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Founders | Deborah Blum and Tom Zeller Jr. |
| Industry | Media |
| Website | undark |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | March 2016 |
The publication's tag line is "Truth, Beauty, Science."[1][4]
The magazine is published under the auspices of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[5]
Undark publishes a mix of long-form journalism, shorter features, essays, op-eds, questions and answers, and book excerpts and reviews. All content is freely available to read, and most is available for republishing by other publications and websites.[6][7] Many large national and international publications, including Scientific American,[8] The Atlantic,[9] Smithsonian,[10] NPR,[11] and Outside [12] have republishing relationships with Undark.
Undark was jointly founded in 2016 by Pulitzer Prize-winning science author Deborah Blum and former New York Times journalist Tom Zeller Jr., who serves as editor-in-chief of the magazine.[4][3][13]
Awards
Undark has earned numerous awards for its journalism, including being named a finalist for a 2022 National Magazine Award in the Reporting category.[14]
On February 19, 2019, Undark was awarded a George Polk Award for Environmental Reporting. The award honored photojournalist Larry C. Price and contributing reporters for the magazine's multinational, multipart exposé on global air pollution, called "Breathtaking".[15][16] The series also won the 2019 Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award from the Online News Association.[17]
The magazine's work has been anthologized in The Best American Science & Nature Writing book series.[18]
In 2017, Undark was a finalist for an Online Journalism Award in the Feature category for its series "Wear & Tear",[19] which explored the global impacts of the leather tanning and textile industries.[20] In 2018, three Undark contributors were named as finalists in the National Association of Science Writers' Science and Society Awards.[21]