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[2] to a radium-based luminous paint product called Undark that ultimately proved toxic, if not deadly for those who handled it.[3][4]
 Undark logo | |
Type of site | data magazine |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Founder(s) | Deborah Blum and Tom Zeller Jr. |
| Industry | Media |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | March 2016 |
The publication's tag line is "Truth, Beauty, Science."[5][6]
The magazine is published under the auspices of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[7]
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.[8][9] Many large national and international publications, including Scientific American,[10] The Atlantic,[11] Smithsonian,[12] NPR,[13] and Outside [14] 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.[15][16][17]
Awards
Undark has earned numerous awards for its journalism, including being named a finalist for a 2022 National Magazine Award in the Reporting category.[18]
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".[19][20] The series also won the 2019 Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award from the Online News Association.[21]
The magazine's work has been anthologized in The Best American Science & Nature Writing book series.[22]
In 2017, Undark was a finalist for an Online Journalism Award in the Feature category for its series "Wear & Tear",[23] which explored the global impacts of the leather tanning and textile industries.[24] In 2018, three Undark contributors were named as finalists in the National Association of Science Writers' Science and Society Awards.[25]