By Diana Kwon
Event coverage
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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.
“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it,” said moderator Florence Williams, quoting E.B. White. It was an apt opening for “Four writers sat in a bar: humor and voice in science writing,” which drew an eager, standing-room-only audience.
In her opening remarks as moderator of the panel “Embrace the B word: Branding and Social Media,” Bethany Brookshire, staff education writer at Science News for Students and writer at Science News, warned attendees that they wouldn’t be getting a crash course in gaining Twitter followers.
When Cristine Russell opened the panel on “Sexism, science-writing and solutions: Charting the future” she pointed out that during the several years the association has been working on the issue, current events have emphasized how central it is both in science writing and in science itself.
Liz Neeley draws inspiration from an atypical source: the comedian Jon Stewart. In particular, the artist and Story Collider executive director enjoys reliving a moment in 2006 when Stewart appeared on the television show Crossfire. “Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys,” Stewart told hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. “You need to stop hurting America.”
Bird flu in Southeast Asia, the 2011 tsunami in Japan, infections transferred in hospitals and AIDS in the rural south. Facts are only part of these stories. When told from the perspective of the people impacted by the facts, science stories come alive and may even catalyze change.
After the briefest of encounters with legalese, I feel two things: happiness about having never become a lawyer, and gratitude towards anyone who will explain it to me in straightforward terms.
If there was one take-home message from the workshop on Covering Controversies, it might be that science journalists have the obligation to investigate whether something is a legitimate controversy — and if it’s not, the obligation to avoid covering it at all.
What makes a good editor and how do you become one? In a packed room at the annual NASW conference, four science editors discussed that question, as well as an editor’s duties, the relationship between editors and writers, and the ethical challenges editors regularly face.