Physics can help NASCAR fans understand why their favorite racecar driver lost. Carbon-dating can help history buffs unearth forgeries. According to panelists at ScienceWriters 2008 held Oct. 24-28 in Palo Alto, Calif., it takes only a fresh eye to find applications of science in activities such as these and other everyday happenings.
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.
From NASW member A'ndrea Elyse Messer, here are WMV videos of the field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the
Back by popular demand, the pitch slam drew a full room of freelancers eager to pitch their ideas to a prominent panel of editors from New Scientist, Smithsonian, the Los Angeles Times and High Country News. Each publication relies on freelancers to fill front-of-the-book news stories, features, and other departments.
At the 2007 NASW Science and Society meeting in Spokane, Wash., an audience of about 30 science writers benefited from the inside knowledge of two speakers about the process of negotiating a book contract with a traditional publishing house.
The NASW Annual meeting in Spokane was honored to have members of the Arab Science Journalists Association as guests, and they presented a fascinating view of writing about science in another culture.
Science was borne from observation and continues to rely on new ways of seeing phenomena. If it's such an innately visual practice, why has science been so difficult to illustrate?
The lead in: balance in freelance?
We've all been there: struggling to find a narrative, lede or metaphor to make a complicated science story understandable to the general public. Writers Michael D. Lemonick and Michael Shermer tried to explain their methods at a NASW 2007 Session, but in some cases left the audience wishing for more details.