Journalism can be maddeningly ephemeral. Days to months of reporting produce articles that spend a few weeks on the newsstand or just hours on a website’s home page. Then, poof! Old stories get buried by new ones. Readers are lost before they even had a chance to lay their eyes on what you wrote. It doesn’t have to be that way, says David Wolman, a freelancer in Portland, Ore., who has compiled a selection of his own articles and a few book chapters into a re-mastered collection that he has self-published digitally
Science writing news
The National Association of Science Writers is pleased to announce the five winners of this year's Science in Society awards, which honor investigative or interpretive reporting about the sciences and their impact on society. Read more to meet the 2014 winning authors and read their work.
A close encounter with a sea turtle in 2005 sparked Melissa Gaskill’s interest in protecting this endangered species. Her co-authored book, A World-Wide Travel Guide to Sea Turtles, tells how people can support this goal by volunteering or visiting conservation sites.
Catherine Dold had no experience writing about addiction, and didn’t think she wanted to write about it. She had never written a book, either. After responding to an ad seeking a co-author, however, she accepted the challenge.
Life can be hectic for an award-winner writer. Ask Dan Fagin, whose book Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation (Bantam Books) was honored in a doubleheader on May 28. First, came presentation of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, at a luncheon at Columbia University. This was followed that evening by receipt of the New York Public Library’s 2014 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
It’s vital that you assume greater responsibility for your financial future. Don’t rely exclusively on paid advisers. At the very least, become knowledgeable enough to raise good questions and evaluate answers when dealing with professionals. The informed client gets the best advice.
The winner of the 2014 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, is Azeen Ghorayshi. Ghorayshi received the award and its $1,000 prize for “Bio Hackers,” a story in the East Bay Express about the “small but growing community of hackers, tinkerers and off-hours science enthusiasts” who are genetically engineering organisms in their garages and basements; and “Choking to Death in Tehran,” a story in Newsweek about smog in Iran.
We have resent personalized voting invitations to all regular members who have not yet voted for the 2014-16 board. Meet the candidates by reading the full article, clicking here for a PDF with photos and bios, or perusing the summer issue of ScienceWriters magazine.
Spending time in a primatology research center gave Dennis Meredith insight into the behavior of chimpanzees, and honed his appreciation of legal, ethical, and emotional issues affecting their care. That experience, he says, helped shape his novel, Solomon’s Freedom.
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