Science journalism can be a frustrating craft.
Even if you get the facts right, the scientist is likely to gripe that you missed the whole point, while your editor rarely gives you enough space to explain it adequately. Still, there are a few practitioners who somehow manage to do the job superbly, and K. C. Cole of the Los Angeles Times is one of the best. It helps that she works for one of the few big-city dailies that can afford to give science the space it deserves, and Cole's reputation rests on long articles or even series that explore a complex or controversial area of science in depth. Cole begins with a simple and familiar example, compound interest. She ends with an examination of the mathematics of symmetry, which guides modern physicists to the hidden structure of matter.