by Tabitha M. Powledge
But here’s a brief update. As of this writing (early November), Richard tells me, nothing much has happened. However, he adds, “The issue of membership is by no means dead. I am going to initiate another board discussion of it and I’d like to have a proposal (or maybe two) for the board to present at the membership meeting. If we do get that far, the matter will then be put to a mail vote of the entire membership early next year.”
That reads to me like an invitation to draft proposals. I am suggesting to the freelance committee that we come up with at least one. Send your ideas to freelance committee chairman Joel Shurkin (joel@nasw.org) or me (tam@nasw.org). But PLEASE read the discussion first; you won’t really understand some of the issues otherwise.
And of course attend the usual mannerly discourse at the NASW membership meeting. It’s always scheduled for 4 p.m. of the Saturday during the AAAS meeting at the headquarters hotel. Yes, that makes it an immovable feast, but I wouldn’t expect a love feast—even though, in 1998, the date turns out to be Valentine’s Day.
I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia
The summer’s membership debate underscored one hard truth about freelancing that appears to have been a dirty little secret to a lot of people (most of them, of course, not freelances). The revelation: It is next to impossible to make a living freelancing magazine articles and books.
Freelances who survive must do other things, too, preferably regular gigs for regular clients. Usually these projects reimburse for time spent, not product, like editing and consulting. Or they involve writing that pays better than your average magazine or book—reports, handouts, background papers—for clients such as ad agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and the government.
Despite all the freelance listserve yada yada yada about today’s revolutionary restructuring of the economics of freelance writing, there is nothing new about this double life. Occasional writing and editing for deep-pocketed clients (often corporate or commercial) has subsidized most “real” freelance journalism for decades at least, and probably forever.
Kathryn Brown is organizing one of the NASW workshops before the February AAAS meeting in Philadelphia that addresses this reality. (If you don’t know what the NASW workshops are, see below.) Kathryn calls the session a variation on previous “Meet-the-Editors” gatherings. “We’ll meet four editors, directors, contractors (etc.) who routinely hire freelancers. The difference is that our panelists are not from the six publications everyone already knows about. Instead, they cover niches you may not have explored, including non-profit organizations, Web sites, and government contract work. NY freelancer Karla Harby will moderate this workshop.” Panel TBA. Thursday, February 12, 5:15-6:30.
Kathryn has organized a second freelance workshop too, on business matters. Three well-known panelists will tackle subjects such as taxes (What's deductible? Do you need an accountant?) and the ever-popular managing cash flow (including techniques for getting paid on time; you can never have too many of these.) Veteran freelance Robin Marantz Henig will moderate and contribute, and we'll also hear from Julian Block, tax attorney and finance columnist, and Ingrid Wickelgren, freelance writer and Science correspondent. Thursday, Feb. 12, 12:15-1:30.
The good news about the 1998 workshops is that they have been expanded from a day to a day-and-a-half. The bad news is that means you must spring for an extra night’s lodging at Philly’s astounding prices if you want to get to Jane Stevens’s world-famous update on science writing for multimedia. It will probably be worth it. Jane has been there, done that, in such garden spots as Antarctica and the bottom of the sea, and she promises several other experts will also give directions for getting on the B. Clinton Bridge to that century over there. The panels include staffers from MSNBC, Discovery Online, the New York Times’s Cybertimes, our own Merry Bruns, independent multimedia producer, and others too numerous to mention. The sessions will take place at the Academy of Natural Sciences, and will be followed by a reception and tours. Wednesday, February 11, 1-5.
Laura van Dam, long-time senior editor at Technology Review, has put
together a session for freelances that poses the ageless question “Is
the phrase ‘warm and fuzzy’ absurd in our business?” Here’s
how she describes it: “The connection between writer and editor extends
far beyond copy quality and financial matters. For both sides, figuring
out how to work well with the other is critical. A panel of editors—and
at least one freelance writer—will explore how to avoid common problems
in this ‘marriage’ and to foster a healthy, respectful relationship.”
So far the panel includes freelance Steve Mirsky, David Ansley of Consumer
Reports, and Tim Appenzeller of Science. Others TBA. Thursday,
February 12, 10-11:30.
Workshops of relevance to all in NASW, not just freelances, are also scheduled
for Thursday, February 12. You can catch up on professional ethics, cloning,
and reporting on scientific uncertainties like the computer problem with
the year 2000. 2001. Whatever.
Or if you love your beige writing machine and simply want to LEARN HOW TO MAKE BIG MONEY AT HOME WITH YOUR COMPUTER, you might check out Glennda Chui’s session on computer-assisted reporting, usually called CAR. Glennda, who works at the San Jose Mercury News, has been involved with CAR for several years. We are not talking here about topics like whether it’s OK to send queries by e-mail and do I really need a scanner. CAR involves serious number-crunching and analysis of government records and other databases, and is usually undertaken by publications that can put substantial staff—reporters, editors, and tech support—on a major project for fairly long periods. But there might be a tip or two that you could use. If not, it’s bound to be interesting. Panel, to focus on using CAR for science writing, TBA. Thursday, February 12, 1:30-2:45.
PIO sessions are scheduled for Friday, February 13, some of which might also be of interest to you. For example, tips on working with difficult researchers; I would expect some priceless anecdotes.
February 13 is also the day AAAS sessions begin in earnest. You should have gotten a mailing on the meeting from AAAS in October. If not, call the AAAS News Office, 202-326-6440, or register online at http://www.aaas.org/communications/am98rf.htm. The meeting schedule and hotel info is here too. The AAAS meeting dates are February 12-17, 1998, and the sessions are at the Philadelphia Convention Center and the Marriott Hotel.
If the prospect of a stimulating NASW membership meeting doesn’t lure you to Philadelphia, the NASW workshops should. Freelances who’ve attended NASW’s pre-AAAS sessions in the past know they’re a valuable mix of how-tos and collegiality, especially useful to those of us who work mostly in isolation. Freelances who haven’t are depriving their businesses of excellent professional advice at low cost— $35, which includes a box lunch and is, of course, deductible. All the Thursday sessions will be at the Marriott Grand Ballroom, so let’s boogie. Sign-up forms are in the December membership renewal mailing. Carol Cruzan Morton, workshop overseer, has provided a more detailed list of workshops on page 20 of this issue of ScienceWriters. Even more to the point, she has kindly posted the schedule on her Web site and promises weekly updates—<http://nasw.org/users/ccmorton/98schedule.html>.
Last issue I said nice things about the expert-finding service available on the Newswise Web site, which is designed for journalists and run by NASW member Roger Johnson. The site has a number of other attractions, too. It maintains a database of news releases on science, medical, and business topics, each organized separately and then divided into files by month. I didn’t time them, but keyword searches struck me as unusually quick. You can also browse.
The site has extensive searchable meeting calendars, one for science and one for medicine. There are also guides to journalism awards, grants, and fellowships, complete with contact information. I don’t believe I’ve seen similar guides elsewhere, except here in SW.
Register for a PressPass (free) at the site and you get access to the expert-finding service and embargoed releases. You can also take advantage of a lovely variation on the old e-mailed digest of releases. If you spot an intriguing digest item in the twice-weekly SciWire, you can retrieve the full text quickly via e-mail without having to go to the Newswise site yourself to collect it. Extremely handy. Sign up for SciWire in an e-mail to rjohnson@newswise.com.
Newswise is also clean, clearly organized, and simple to navigate. Not negligible virtues at a time when the Webmaster First Commandment seems to be “If it gyrates, post it.”
Annotated Guides to Web Sites
I don’t visit the Web site for the smart British magazine New Scientist regularly because it posts a fairly small proportion of its print content. But I was poking around the site recently and stumbled across Hot Spots: recommendations, descriptions, and links to selected science sites. Many of the recommendations are unusual—often, for example, to European sites that are little known in the U.S. They can also be quirky, another reason to check them out.
Hot Spots describes many sites in the various physical and biological sciences and also a “general” category that includes sites for kids, reference, science history, museums, and the like. I clicked on some almost at random and found a number that were bookmark-worthy. For example:
The On-Line Dictionaries site at Bucknell claims links to more than 400 dictionaries in 130 different languages, including artificial languages and sign languages. A quick look-up in English feature on its home page consults the Tenth Collegiate. I didn’t have time to look at sign languages (not just ASL, also foreign sign languages), but I imagine those sites might be very useful for a piece about deafness. I didn’t have time to try Mayan or Manx either, and the Yiddish dictionary was out of commission. But I couldn’t, of course, pass up a chance to brush up on my Vulcan. It was shocking to learn that there appears to be no Vulcan translation of “Live long and prosper.” Perhaps Vulcans invented the phrase solely for diplomatic communication with English-speaking humans. <http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/diction.html>.
The SciEd site at the University of Washington presents links to a great many resources for science and math education. It’s aimed at teachers, but teaching is what we do, too. In addition to the usual links organized by scientific discipline, there are topics on doing science, ethics, skepticism and pseudoscience, and equipment and software suppliers. Science questions can also be posted there. <http://www-hpcc.astro.washington.edu/scied/science.html>
Evolution Update, designed for teachers and students of biology, contains news and feature items about evolutionary biology and links to other sites on that subject. Expect orthodox Darwinism here; creationists need not apply. <http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/7111/>
If you have no confidence that you understand what a confidence interval is, surf to Statistics Every Writer Should Know. A public benefactor named Robert Niles has put together a searchable primer on the basics. It includes a useful chapter on data analysis subtitled “How to tell if these numbers are really worth writing about anyway.” And you can post questions. Probably not for the statistically sophisticated, but if you harbor a burning desire to quietly renew acquaintance with the standard deviation, who’s to know? <http://nilesonline.com/stats/index.shtml>
One of my favorites is the Medieval Science Page, lovingly maintained by James McNelis, who also edits Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature. The page contains the usual links organized by scientific discipline, all of them with at least some medieval content, plus links to extremely valuable sites in the history of science and the history of medicine, plus instructions for joining mailing lists on related topics. This is the place if you need the skinny on falconry, leprosy, alchemy, and mythical plants. McNelis has recently widened the site’s purview to include some links to materials about the Renaissance. They sound pretty dull by comparison. <http://members.aol.com/mcnelis/medsci_index.html>
This is the briefest sampling of the scores of recommended links at the New Scientist site. You can get to any of them directly from the Hot Spots page: <http://www.keysites.com/keysites/hotspots/hotspots.html> or go to Hot Spots from the magazine’s home page: <http://www.newscientist.com>
Encountering New Scientist’s Hot Spots set me to wondering if other science magazines recommend and describe sites too. A brief search turned up two good compilations, one from Scientific American and the other from Discover.
Both are much less idiosyncratic than New Scientist’s. Also much shorter. Each describes a handful of sites in each scientific discipline, with almost no duplication. Scientific American also links with news about science, a few government sites, and some search tools. Discover describes several science education sites. The riches of Web science are so great that there is very little overlap between these two annotated lists. You will waste no time if you consult both. <http://www.sciam.com/bookmarks/editselect.html> http://www.enews.com/magazines/discover/webtur.html>
Live long and prosper.