Multiple events that came to light in late 2013 revealed that the science-writing community is not immune to professional issues of sexual harassment. A ScienceWriters2013 session titled The XX Question served as a forum for a broad range of issues related to professional status and recognition for women in the field. This post is a commentary from “LadyBits” blogger Rose Eveleth on issues raised in the session. From the Winter 2013-14 ScienceWriters.
ScienceWriters magazine
The IRS wants to help freelance writers and other owners of home-based businesses who take deductions for home offices. An accommodating agency announced that freelancers have the option to use new, simpler rules based on the size of their offices, starting with returns for calendar year 2013 that are filed in 2014. From the Winter 2013-14 ScienceWriters.
Science does not stop at the U.S./Mexico border. Yet, regional and national news coverage that chronicles science, technology, the environment, agriculture, fisheries, and public health often overlooks the economic and human impacts south of the border. From the Fall 2013 ScienceWriters.
Last summer, 807 participants from 77 countries met in Helsinki, Finland, to attend the 8th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ). Over the course of five days, more than 50 sessions, workshops, and plenary talks together with social events ranging from cocktails aboard an Ice Breaker to traditional Finnish dancing on an open-air stage took place. From the Fall 2013 ScienceWriters.
Each February, NASW hosts an internship fair at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). And each year, editors and science communicators from esteemed media outlets take part to assess the next batch of bright-eyed students who might one day work beside them. From the Fall 2013 ScienceWriters.
The only time most of us think of doing something about our federal income taxes is once a year — the hours we spend actually grappling with Form 1040 or when gathering records to deliver them to a paid preparer. From the Fall 2013 ScienceWriters.
In his final column, Rick Borchelt shares three seminal pieces of research from the decades past that he think every practitioner of science communication should know and be able to recite word for word. From the Summer 2013 ScienceWriters.
There’s still a gender gap in the sciences, with far fewer women than men in research jobs, and those women earning substantially less, but it doesn’t help when journalists treat every female scientist they profile as an archetype of perseverance. Such was the consensus that emerged from a discussion prompted by a March 5 post at Double X Science. From the Summer 2013 ScienceWriters.
When the Wisconsin legislative joint finance committee inserted a motion into the proposed state budget that would have banned the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from maintaining its offices on campus — and would forbid any university employee from working with the center — the university and journalists pushed back, and won. Deborah Blum tells the story in the Summer 2013 ScienceWriters.
Are we doing the right thing by recruiting students into science journalism, which is undergoing all the upheavals that are hitting journalism as a whole? Will they find jobs or good freelance opportunities? Michael Balter of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Journalism Program discusses this question in the Summer 2013 ScienceWriters.