2008-09 NASW Board

Mariette DiChristina joined Scientific American as executive editor in April 2001. In addition to her duties for the monthly flagship magazine, she is the launch editor (in 2004) and manager of the bimonthly Scientific American Mind, which covers research about the brain and behavior. She also manages Scientific American's quarterly newsstand special editions.

Previously, she was executive editor at Popular Science, where she worked for nearly 14 years. Her work in writing and overseeing articles about space topics for that magazine helped garner Popular Science the Space Foundation's 2001 Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award. While at Popular Science, she also served on the launch teams for PopSci for Kids, targeted to children, and Verge, a men's lifestyle and gear-oriented magazine. Before becoming a magazine editor, she was a reporter for the Gannett-Westchester Newspapers, now known as the Journal News, and a stringer for papers in New York and Massachusetts.

Since 2006 she has been an adjunct professor in the graduate Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University. In spring 2005 she was Science Writer in Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her chapter on science editing appears in the second edition of A Field Guide for Science Writers (Oxford University Press, 2005).

In addition to being president of the National Association of Science Writers, DiChristina is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She is former chair of Science Writers in New York (2001 to 2004). She holds a B.S. in magazine journalism from Boston University.

I'm a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, covering science and medicine. But I've been through many mutations as a journalist — from a small-town newspaper and television reporter in Idaho, to covering Congress and the Supreme Court, then freelancing for magazines including Outside, Health, and Smithsonian. In the early 1990s, I founded the first bilingual newspaper in Kamchatka, Russia, on a Fulbright. And I served as an assistant managing editor for U.S. News, directing the magazine's science coverage. I'm now blogging (aren't we all?), and helping to produce multimedia reports for the U.S. News website.

In the next two years, I'd like to work to expand NASW programs geared toward helping members thrive in a turbulent media world. I also hope to continue our mandate to improve the quality of science writing worldwide.

Peggy Girshman is an executive editor at Kaiser Health News, a non-profit news service covering the practice of medicine, health care policy, health financing and the politics of health care reform. Previously, she was an Executive Editor at Congressional Quarterly. She held a number of jobs at National Public Radio, including deputy senior science editor, deputy national editor, assistant managing editor and, was also one of several managing editors. She served as senior medical producer at Dateline NBC, senior producer at the PBS programs Scientific American Frontiers and Against All Odds: Inside Statistics. She has also worked at local television stations in Washington, D.C., and helped launch a start-up that eventually became New York Times television.

I've been a reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal for 26 years, the last 20 covering health and medicine. I'm currently deputy bureau chief of the health and science group, a role in which I both cover and help shape our coverage of medicine, the pharmaceutical and device industries and the health-care system.

My main coverage responsibilities include biotechnology, cardiology and oncology. During my initial years on the health beat, I focused on health policy and health economics. Prior to that, I covered the electric utility and nuclear power industries, spent a brief stint as a technology columnist and served as science and technology editor on our national news desk.

Earlier in my career, I taught journalism at the University of New Hampshire, my alma mater. I started my newspaper career at the Providence (R.I.) Journal. I am the author of Hard Aground, the Story of the Argo Merchant Oil Spill; co-author of Open and Shut (a true crime story) and was a co-writer of NOVA, the book published in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the PBS science program.

I was a founding board member of the Association of Health Care Journalists. I joined NASW in 1990.

Board Members At Large

In 2002, through my efforts, NASW joined Authors Coalition of America, which has reliably provided NASW more than $50,000 annually. Coalition funds pay for a variety of services, including the new Words' Worth market database, national and international travel fellowships, enhanced content for our workshops, newsletter and website, and more. Within NASW, I serve on the board and the freelance committee and have co-chaired the Science-in-Society Awards. NASW honored my service with the McGurgan Award.

These are very challenging times for science writers, with many newspapers and magazines struggling and new media evolving rapidly. I believe NASW needs to be more vigorous than ever as our source of information, education, advocacy and support. My decades of experience freelancing, formerly mostly in magazines and books and now largely on the Web, in the areas of health, medicine, science policy, psychology and social science, gender and genetics have taught me much about how the market works. With seven national writing prizes, eight books, hundreds of articles, and a monthly column on Science magazine's website, I want to keep working to make NASW stronger and more useful to all our members.

During my 13-year membership in NASW, I have seen our organization mature into an invaluable network of science writers who share a common desire to excel in our professions. As co-chair of the education and Internet committees and a two-term board member, I have had the good fortune to work on many of the projects that contributed to NASW's growth, including the organization's wildly popular annual mentoring program and internship fair. After seven years as co-chair of the Education Committee, I took on the role of co-chair of the Internet committee, playing a key role in the redesign of our website.

I continue to work on projects to increase online resources for our members and have many ideas about ways we can make our website even more useful and dynamic. I was a co-recipient of the Diane McGurgan Service Award in 2004 and have been a board member since 2005, a position that has given me new insight into our organization and its relevance in the field. I am particularly interested in increasing our efforts to assist the ever-growing population of freelance science writers, as well as projects to help bring new communicators into our profession.

Over the last 18 years, I have been medical reporter, university PIO, magazine editor and, since 2004, a full-time freelance writer and regular contributor to the Boston Globe, Science, ScienceNOW!, and many other publications. I have bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama and a master's degree from Ohio University, both in journalism, and have taught science writing to undergraduate journalism students.

After 23 years as a science reporter and editor for the San Jose Mercury News, I recently moved to Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) to become deputy editor of symmetry. It's a joint publication of two U.S. Department of Energy laboratories (Fermilab and SLAC), and covers particle physics. I also co-teach a science news writing course in the UC Santa Cruz science communication program. I've been a member of the Northern California Science Writers Association pretty much since it started, and have served on its board and as president. With Tom Paulsen, I co-chair a NASW committee concerned with maintaining free access to the information that's critical to doing our jobs. The committee works closely with the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Association of Health Care Journalists, and a national freedom of information coalition set up under the auspices of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. I'm keenly interested in the education of the next generation of science journalists, and in the future of journalism in general.

Terry Devitt is director of Research Communications for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the past 24 years Devitt has covered the basic and applied sciences at UW-Madison. He also edits and is the project coordinator for The Why Files, a popular and critically successful site about science and technology published on the World Wide Web (whyfiles.org) under the auspices of the UW-Madison Graduate School. Devitt is an active freelance science writer and has contributed to such publications as Astronomy, Orion, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, the Milwaukee Journal, the American Heart Association, the Bulletin of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the children's science magazine Muse. Devitt's awards include the 2001 Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for In-depth Reporting. In 1997, he was the recipient of a Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Gold Award for his work helping to develop The Why Files. In 2007, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Devitt also serves on the executive board of the National Association of Science Writers.

Because I am a full-time freelancer, scoping out new opportunities is par for the course. I'm convinced there are opportunities to be found in our current media crisis, I'm determined to help NASW and its members find them. That means everything from exploring new strains of multimedia science journalism to scoping out emerging markets and business models.

In recent years I've focused my efforts within NASW on the business side of science writing. As chair or co-chair of the freelance committee from 2004 to 2007, I spearheaded several new initiatives, including Words' Worth, NASW's online database of freelance rates and contracts information. I co-founded and chair NASW's grievance committee, which helps members collect overdue fees and resolve other grievances with publishers. These initiatives are designed to help NASW members thrive.

I'm a contributing correspondent for Science, and I've written about science and technology for magazines such as Popular Science, New Scientist, Audubon and Reader's Digest, as well as online publications such as WebMD and the late HMS Beagle. My work has won several honors, including an Outstanding Article Award for best magazine profile writing from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and a story of mine was anthologized in Best of Technology Writing 2006.

As a two-term board member my main focus has been NASW's Science-in-Society Awards. Each year I've worked hard to assemble a stellar list of judges and have shepherded several hundred entries through the process. At present, I'm leading an effort to re-examine the S-I-S awards. Do our current categories make sense? Should there be more, fewer? How should the S-I-S Awards Committee chair be guided in selecting judges free of conflicts of interest? Are the judging criteria clear enough? Is the $2,500 prize adequate? I look forward to a stimulating discussion on these matters, and I hope to be re-elected to the board to implement any changes that are recommended. I also hope to find a way, probably outside the S-I-S structure, to honor outstanding work from NASW members on the public information end of things. As a former PIO (Caltech), freelancer, and current staff journalist, I believe I can represent three of NASW's main constituencies on matters relating to the awards and also to the many other issues requiring board discussion.

Maybe it's because I'm a full-time freelance that my work on the NASW board for the past 10 years has been so satisfying — it's the only way I have colleagues anymore! Along with Dan Ferber and Ellen Ruppel Shell, I'm a founding member of the NASW grievance committee, in which we deal with members' problems with editors or publishers and generally manage to help them get the payment they deserve. It's a wonderful new member service for an evolving organization. I'm also trying to help usher NASW into the 21st century by exploring how science can be communicating in ways that go beyond the ordinary print-based or broadcast-based venues. The most fun I've had in this regard has been in creating the NASW science cabaret, now a regular event at the annual meeting featuring performers who use science as the basis for their music, theater, and stand-up comedy.

I spend most of my time these days writing articles for the New York Times Magazine, where I'm a contributing writer. I've written eight books, most recently Pandora's Baby, about the early days of in vitro fertilization, which won an NASW Science in Society Award, and The Monk in the Garden, about the early days of genetics. I am also a co-editor, with Deborah Blum and Mary Knudson, of NASW's A Field Guide to Science Writing.

I've been a member of NASW for more than a quarter of a century. Yes, we are a goofy group of nerds and the elite writers of science out there may think they don't need us. That's what makes them elite, I guess. As a newspaper journalist for the same period of time, I often felt I too didn't need any such organization either. I was happy to serve on the board, as I have done for the past few years, primarily because NASW and CASW helped me get started in this unseemly business. But I felt my participation was mostly an act of giving on my part.

How wrong can a person be? Not only have I gained immeasurably from the professional perspective and social support of my colleagues, but now I need NASW way more than it needs me. My newspaper has ceased publication and the mainstream media is imploding. I am now a freelancer and uncertain as to the future of science writing in general. I have much more to learn as a freelancer and, fortunately, NASW has much more to give me. I now recognize how fortunate we all are to have an organization like this, especially during this time of "creative destruction" in the media. NASW is only going to increase in importance as it seeks to represent a diverse community of people dedicated to science communications.

Radical changes in markets for science writers dominate our work lives, especially the rise of web-based publications. In the eight years I have been a board member, NASW has become more activist and concerned about professional and business issues like electronic rights and contracts. We have expanded services for our growing freelance membership, making essential electronic communications more reliable and useful, helping resolve grievances and payment problems with clients, and worrying more about the business of science writing. For seven years I wrote about such changes in the ScienceWriters column "The Free Lance," and I am also a long-time member of the freelance and Internet committees.

I was founding editor of The Scientist and an editor at what is now Nature Biotechnology. A full-time freelance since 1990, I have written for paper publications that include Scientific American, Popular Science, Health magazine, PLOS Biology, The Scientist, Washington Post, BioScience, and The Lancet. My book The Complete

Idiot's Guide to Microbiology came out in 2007, and I am working far too slowly on a second edition of my 1994 book Your Brain: How You Got It and How It Works. I do freelance editing too. Like many freelances, I write increasingly for web publications that have included SciAm, The Scientist, Salon.com, and the late HMS Beagle/BioMedNet.com. I'm a regular contributor to the technology blog Popgadget.net.

Vikki Valentine is digital editor for NPR's science and health desk. She creates multi-dimensional stories working in a number of formats — text, video, animation, sound — on topics ranging from cloning and the nature of language to an interactive feature examining the number of military and civilian fatalities in Iraq. Valentine was also lead web producer on NPR's 2007 award-winning Climate Connections series.

Valentine, who has an M.A. from the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, specializes in historical features, with on-air and Web reports on the first surgeon to correct vision, war medicine, the origins of the 1918 pandemic flu, what dinner was like with our first president and Mao Zedong's "Barefoot Doctors." She also edits the listeners' questions series for Morning Edition's Your Health segment, connecting NPR's audience with the latest advice from medical experts on topics such as sleep, weight-loss, back pain and Lasik eye surgery.

Prior to NPR, Valentine worked as a daily science news editor at Discovery.com and as a features editor at BaltimoreSun.com.

Valentine lives in Washington, D.C., with her hopelessly overweight but nonetheless very handsome cats, Tito and Cricket. Her hobbies include ballet and uncovering as many disgusting details about historical diseases as her spare time permits.

M. Mitchell Waldrop is currently the editorial page editor at Nature magazine. He earned a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics at the University of Wisconsin in 1975, and a Master's in journalism at Wisconsin in 1977. From 1977 to 1980 he was a writer and West Coast bureau chief for Chemical and Engineering News. From 1980 to 1991 he was a senior writer at Science magazine, where he covered physics, space, astronomy, computer science, artificial intelligence, molecular biology, psychology, and neuroscience. He was a freelance writer from 1991 to 2003 and from 2007 to 2008; in between he worked in media affairs for the National Science Foundation from 2003 to 2006. He is the author of Man-Made Minds (Walker, 1987), a book about artificial intelligence; Complexity (Simon & Schuster, 1992), a book about the Santa Fe Institute and the new sciences of complexity; and The Dream Machine (Viking, 2001), a book about the history of computing. In his spare time he is an avid cyclist. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Amy E. Friedlander.

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