Jerry E. Bishop, 76, former deputy news editor for science, technology, and medicine for the Wall Street Journal, died October 26, after a long fight against lung cancer. He was a NASW member for 45 years, a former editor of ScienceWriters, and past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
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Stand-alone newspaper science sections rose to prominence in the late 1980s as a popular venue for in-depth science coverage, reaching a peak of 95 sections in 1989. Since then, they have been dropping in number and size, particularly among smaller papers. Those that remain have shifted dramatically toward softer consumer-oriented, "news you can use" medicine and personal health coverage and away from science topics like physics, astronomy, and earth sciences.
By Emma Marris
At a session filled with video clips, multimedia web surfing and, yes, someone muttering at the display computer "I am a Mac person. How do you ... ," panelists at the "21st Century Science Writing: New Tools for Thinking Outside the Box" session of this year's NASW meeting talked blogs, YouTube, Facebook and online gambling. Each panelist presented a case study or two of how they use new technologies to tell stories better and faster.By Alison Drain
NASW took place as baseball's best were on the verge of a World Series — and players and writers alike worked to perfect their pitches.
By Sharon Levy
The speakers at "Taming the Digital Office" would find it odd, perhaps even perverse, that I'm drafting this story using pen and paper. My work style is clearly very different from that of the computer-savvy members of the panel.
By Jennifer Weeks
Session organizer and freelancer Karyn Hede designed this session for the 2007 NASW Science in Society meeting to spotlight intersections between food, wine, and science, and to suggest new story ideas in this field. As she noted, food safety stories have important science elements. For example, the nationwide outbreak of E. Coli 0157:H7 in 2006 that was traced to California spinach raised questions about how to avoid similar contamination and how often produce should be tested.
By Krista West
Science writers are in the business of communicating real, worthwhile, exciting science — working either as science journalists or public information officers. It's not about the job title; it's about communicating new scientific discoveries to the intended audience.
Thanks to a generous grant from the William T. Golden Endowment Fund at AAAS, the NASW Mentoring Program can offer as many as 10 undergraduate students interested in science journalism up to $1000 in travel expenses to attend the 2008 AAAS meeting in Boston. The meeting will be held from February 14 to 18, 2008. NASW's education committee will select the students independently from AAAS and will pair each one with a veteran writer for a one-day mentorship program.