Did you know that NASW members get a discounted membership rate of $150 for unlimited access to the National Writers Union’s grievance and contract negotiation services? There are also a limited number of slots for free consultation on specific issues available on a first-come, first-served basis via the NASW Freelance Committee.
Some potentially helpful resources on stress, burnout, and mindfulness including those collected during the March 6, 2025 workshop "Burnout: Causes and Remedies for Science Communicators."
“Pandemics start small, grow large due to negligence, and leave rot behind that we generally don’t bother to clean up before the next pandemic arrives,” Edna Bonhomme writes. In A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19, she details how racial, sexual, and class discrimination maintains disparities in healthcare and society.
An update for the science-writing community about a change regarding this year’s conference, ScienceWriters2025.
The human cost of prolonged space travel urgently needs attention, Dennis Meredith asserts in Earthbound: The Obstacles to Human Space Exploration & the Promise of Artificial Intelligence. Astronauts experience bone loss & problems with vision, digestion, heart and immune system functions, cognition, & more. Using AI robotic space probes instead of humans, Meredith says, offers an ethical option.
This NASW Freelance Committee virtual meetup will be a business chat on business structures. To speak on the topic, volunteer event hosts Jennifer Huber and Ellen Kuwana have invited Wudan Yan, who founded The Writers’ Co-op, a business podcast and learning academy for freelance creatives.
“The Covid-19 pandemic was not a fluke,” Carl Zimmer writes in Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. Public health authorities initially said close personal contact spread the disease via droplets and fomites on surfaces. It took months for them to recognize Covid-19’s airborne transmission. “The Covid-19 pandemic,” Zimmer notes, “made the ocean of gases surrounding us visible.”
NASW and more than 40 organizations that champion journalists and the public’s right to know released a joint statement on Friday, February 21, 2025. Led by the Society of Professional Journalists, the statement condemns the campaign underway in the United States to penalize independent reporting on the government and its activities.
NASW was founded more than 90 years ago with a mission to “fight for the free flow of science news.” That mission is imperative, yet threatened by recent challenges to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press.
