After a good night’s rest following Friday’s conference kick-off, science writers from across the country gathered at the NASW business meeting Saturday morning for updates on the work the committees have been doing over the past year and their visions for the future.
Event coverage
Coverage begins in 2006 for the ScienceWriters meeting and 2009 for the AAAS meeting. To see programs for past ScienceWriters meetings, go to the ScienceWriters meeting site.
NASW members can access selected video of workshop sessions from the ScienceWriters2013 conference. Members can read more for the link and access code.
Throughout the year, we will be releasing videos or excerpts of selected NASW professional development workshop session to share with those unable to attend [ScienceWriters2013](http://www.sciencewriters2013.org). The first session released is [The XX Question](http://www.sciencewriters2013.org/sessions/d1-xx-question.html), taped on Saturday, November 2, 2013.
NASW members and other ScienceWriters2013 meeting attendees have contributed photos from conference events. Use the "read more" button to see them.
Few people would assume that starting a publication is easy. But the take-home message of Saturday afternoon’s session on the topic drove home just how taxing the process can be. “It will leave you nerve-wracked and reaching for sedatives,” said panelist Bobbie Johnson, co-founder of the online publication Matter, which has been publishing long-form articles about science, technology, medicine and the environment since November 2012.
Sunday morning began as sweetly as the late Lou Reed’s until Maryn McKenna stepped in. Leave it to “scary disease girl” to scare a captive audience with a panel on pandemics. Grab a raisin danish and tune into a talk about a new SARS-like virus sweeping Saudi Arabia and cholera in Haiti.
There is no magic secret for writers when it comes to organizing your materials and time but there are a number of tools that could help, said panelists at NASW’s session on “Online and Offline Tools for Mastering Your Workflow.”
A panel of freelance journalists including moderators Rose Eveleth and Rachel Nuwer, and Charles Choi, Virginia Hughes, and Melinda Wenner Moyer reviewed results from a 2013 survey of science writers.
An image of a man with pink scars running up and down the inside of his arm flits across the screen. A used heroin needle rests on the sink next to him. “Addiction is one of the most stigmatized and not spoken about complications,” said Cassie Rodenberg, a Scientific American blogger and science teacher at a South Bronx middle school. “These are the people who are ignored.”
What makes the writer-editor relationship work? In a frank discussion between freelance writers, staff editors and a highly participatory audience, the “Working with Editors” session at the annual NASW meeting focused on the relationship forged after an assignment commission.