Moderator Nancy Shute began the “Wikipedia: The best, most hated resource for science communicators" seminar at ScienceWriters2012 by proposing this question to the audience. Dozens of sheepish science writers slowly raised their hands and a nervous giggle filled the room.
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.
Alan Brown, moderator of the panel, “Surviving your mid-career crisis,” faced a scary question as a feature writer when the demand for long-form began to dwindle: how would he make a living?
Going to meetings can be overwhelming and expensive, but if you’re a science reporter or public information officer, you can’t afford to miss them.
I'm a big advocate of social networking and spend a lot of time convincing scientists that these platforms aren’t mindless time-sucks. But while it’s easy to make the argument for social media, it’s a whole lot harder to quantify the benefits and show that online efforts are actually paying off.
In his NASW workshop, "Tools for tackling nightmare documents and data," freelancer reporter Tyler Dukes presented an Internet toolkit that can make investigative stories a more feasible prospect. To this end, he presented three online resources that make handling data and documents cheaper and easier: a PDF-file converter, a document sorting program, and a website that allows you to recruit people online to transcribe your interviews and complete other methodical jobs.
Jobs in science journalism at traditional media organizations are starting to return after their recession-driven decline, but these positions have emerged changed and much busier, said speakers at the ScienceWriters2012 session “Not dead yet: How science journalism is evolving at traditional news organizations” on October 27.
A public information officer writes up a press release for her institution, runs it past her source, and hands it off to a journalist who publishes a story about it. Research institutions have been using this news model for ages, but as Dylan put it, the times they are a-changin’.
On her deathbed, David Dobbs’ mother asked her children to cremate her body, releasing the ashes in the Pacific so she could be with a man named Angus. Dobbs embarked on a search for Angus, leading him to a story of wartime love, heartbreak, forensics and family. But no one seemed anxious to publish it. The New Yorker and Wired both rejected the idea. The story languished for years, until he pitched it to Evan Ratliff, editor at The Atavist, a newly launched publisher of ebooks.
In an intimate workshop designed to show writers how to transition to multimedia, Tom Linden moderated the panel, "As seen on TV & heard on radio: Science writing cross training" with panelists Cynthia Graber and Helen Chickering.