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.
From ScienceWriters and AAAS meetings
Conference reports
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.
During the late afternoon session of the NASW workshop “Rising above the noise: using statistics-based reporting,” moderated and organized by Kathleen Raven, an expert panel of statisticians and journalists discussed using statistics to assess the validity and impact of new scientific research findings.
Like most freelancers, Alla Katsnelson and Amy Maxmen struggle with blurry lines. “It’s not clear how hard and fast are the rules” of freelancer ethics, Katsnelson opened. “How and when do you disclose conflicts of interest when pitching?” Often each situation is a judgment call and may be handled by editors and publications in different ways.
It wasn’t a review of the latest news in cosmology or a lesson on how underweight folks could put on pounds, but “Take a Lesson from the Universe: Expand” did provide a valuable session for science writers, editors and PIOs looking to broaden their communication outreach to non-scientists.
The ScienceWriters2013 Awards Gala on Saturday night celebrated some of the finest science journalism of the past year. Winners represented the whole range of media, from book to blog to radio. Science in Society Journalism Awards were given in five categories: book, science reporting, longform science reporting, science reporting for a local or regional market, and commentary and opinion.
Let words collide. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Jesus wept. The queen, my lord, is dead. Collision is power and power rests in brevity. This was the message journalist and teacher Roy Peter Clark delivered to attendees over the course of a winding ride at a ScienceWriters2013 session on Nov 2.
In the film "Starship Troopers," humans battle a marauding race of aliens sometime in Earth's distant future. Along with a militaristic vision, the film portrays the aliens as super-sized insects — a particularly frustrating point for Emory emeritus physics professor Sidney Perkowitz.
You won’t find a website for most of these shadowy, mysterious groups with names like “VSG” and “the Posse.” They’ve been compared to terrorist cells, secret societies, and tribes; membership is highly selective and tightly controlled. Fortunately, these groups are comprised of science writers (and the occasional editor), not terrorists. At ScienceWriters2013, four science writers explained the benefits of forming these so-called “tribes.”