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| Volume 49, Number 2, Summer 2000 |
Election of the 2001-2002 NASW board will take place later this year. Ballots will be mailed to all members in late October. In addition to four officers, the board consists of 11 members at large. A nominating committee chaired by immediate past NASW President Richard Harris, and ably assisted by Charlie Petit, Jon Van, Rick Borchelt, Robin Marantz Henig, and Kathryn Brown, has assembled an outstanding slate of candidates.
Paul Raeburn is a senior editor at Business Week, where he directs coverage of science and technology, medicine, and the environment. Previously, he was science editor for the Associated Press. Raeburn is the author of Mars: Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet and The Last Harvest: The Genetic Gamble That Threatens To Destroy American Agriculture. He has written nearly 100 freelance articles for Popular Science, New York Times, Allure, American Health, Technology Review, and many other newspapers and magazines. Raeburn is a recipient of the NASW Science-in-Society Award, the Associated Press Managing Editors award for excellence in spot news coverage, and the John P. McGovern Award for Excellence in Medical Communications from the American Medical Writers Association. Raeburn is treasurer of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
Deborah Blum is a science writer and a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an appointment that requires her to be a working journalist who teaches. Since joining the UW faculty in 1997, she has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Health, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, Psychology Today, Family Circle, and Rolling Stone. Before coming to UW, Blum was a science writer for 13 years at the Sacramento Bee, where she won a Pulitzer in 1992 for a series on primate research. She is the author of two books, The Monkey Wars and Sex on the Brain, and the co-editor of A Field Guide for Science Writers. Blum has been a member of the NASW board since 1993 and most recently served as NASW treasurer. She chairs the NASW workshops committee, as part of a longtime interest in professional standards and training for science journalists. She is also interested in promoting regional science writing.
Laura van Dam has served NASW for the past two years as secretary and before that as a director at large. She is a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin who focuses on trade science books and who writes on the side. Previously, van Dam was an editor at Technology Review magazine and a newspaper reporter. For five years she has been particularly concerned with educational matters concerning NASW members. Her current interests are the implications of the explosion in science-writing e-jobs, the ramifications of e-books for writers, and opportunities to learn about literary writing. For many years, she has helped organize the New England Science Writers. Van Dam cut her financial teeth while arranging the party thrown by local science writers the last time AAAS met in Boston. She promises to use a healthy respect for adding columns of numbers (the Aargh! factor), if elected as treasurer.
A science writer for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Lee Hotz moved to California in 1993 after many years as a science writer and editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has three times won the AAAS Science Journalism Award, as well as the Walter Sullivan Award from the American Geophysical Union. He shared a 1995 Pulitzer Prize with his colleagues at the Times for coverage of the Northridge Earthquake and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1987 for his coverage of genetic engineering issues in Atlanta. He also is an active freelancer and has been involved in several new media projects such as EurekAlert! and the LA Times Web Site. If elected secretary, Lee said he would support efforts to broaden the organization's regional activities and work to sustain its excellent professional development programs. Furthermore, he also would help foster NASW's Web site and Internet discussion groups, which already have done so much to knit together the organization's members across the country. He is also eager to find ways for NASW to bolster professional standards and resources for science writers working online.
Janet Basu is a senior public information representative at the University of California, San Francisco, primarily covering pediatrics (all medical specialties for small but growing people). Previously, she was a public information representative for Stanford University, covering biological and earth sciences. As a freelance writer, she has written about science, medicine, health and the environment. Her column for Hippocrates, on the health news behind the headlines, won that magazine's first Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Award gold medal, in 1992. She holds degrees in English and journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.
In her 25 years as a prize-winning freelance, Beryl Lieff Benderly has written books, articles, scripts, reports, and more. In her first term as an NASW board member, she has worked to advance the interests of freelances as chair of the freelance committee. She also expanded the Science in Society prize to include books and Web-based work as co-chair of the awards committee. Besides running a freelance workshop at the annual meeting, she advised numerous individual NASW freelances and built bridges to other major writers' organizations. These bring NASWers the latest thinking about today's turbulent marketplace, and make NASW's voice heard as the nation's freelance writers fight for their economic and creative rights at a crucial time in the business's history. Since the advent of the Internet, the freelance trade has undergone its most drastic changes in over a century. Benderly wants to continue as NASW freelances' vigilant eye and clear voice as they face a challenging future.
Mariette DiChristina has been a journalist for 16 years, the last 13 with Popular Science, where she now serves as executive editor. Like many NASW members, she was drawn to science writing by her endless curiosity about how the world works and her desire to educate and entertain readers with good storytelling. She's keenly interested in providing beginning science writers with mentoring opportunities, doing so through the internship program at Popular Science, which she runs, and through the NASW mentoring program, which she has co-coordinated since 1998. Earlier this year, she volunteered to serve as co-chair of the NASW education committee and is working on developing an online mentoring program for new science writers. She serves on the organizing board of Science Writers in New York and is anxious to expand her role in NASW with a seat on the national board.
Carol Ezzell is an editor at Scientific American. She has also worked for Nature, the biotech fax newspaper BioWorld, Science News, and the late, great Journal of NIH Research (for which she was science editor). Ezzell is currently an NASW board member and co-chair of Science Writers in New York (SWINY). She is a past president of DC Science Writers.
Ira Flatow has spent 30 years as a radio and television science broadcaster. He got his first taste of television news working on a morning TV news program at his New York City high school. Starting in 1971, Flatow has covered medicine, health, technology, and the environment as a staff reporter and correspondent for National Public Radio. Currently, he is host of NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday. He is also president of ScienCentral, Inc., a company dedicated to increasing the amount of science news shown on television. Flatow has done science reporting for the CBS This Morning program and was host and writer of the Emmy Award-winning television science series Newton's Apple. He currently serves on the NASW board and seeks reelection.
Jon Franklin is a longtime science writer best known for his use of literary techniques in explaining science and the behavior of scientists. He holds two Pulitzer prizes (feature writing in 1979 and explanatory journalism in 1985) and has published five books, including Writing for Story. He has worked for the Baltimore Sun and taught on the faculties of the University of Maryland, Oregon State University, and the University of Oregon, where he was director of the Creative Writing Program. He currently writes for the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC.
Peggy Girshman joined NBC News in November 1998 as a medical and science producer, primarily for Dateline NBC. During her 23-year broadcast-journalism career, she has worked as a science/medical producer for commercial stations in Washington DC, WNET-TV, and as the senior producer for several PBS series, including Scientific American Frontiers and a 26-part series on statistics. She was a science editor for National Public Radio and a co-winner of the AAAS science-writing prize and two Peabody awards for covering health care. She serves on the board of SWINY, is an AAAS awards judge, helped select journalists for the Knight fellowship, and teaches statistics "at the drop of a hat." She pledges to bring to the NASW board a spirited interest in broadcast and Web science writing (she says "especially important in the upcoming convergence of all media"), as well as general joie de vivre.
Marion E. Glick is vice president of media relations at Porter Novelli, where she has counseled clients including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as medical centers since 1999. From 1984 to 1991, Marion held media relations positions at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, specializing in AIDS, ophthalmology, urology and public health. As chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Information Projects Section, she managed media relations for NIAID's investigators, grantees, and director, Dr. Anthony Fauci. In 1995, she became director of communications for The Rockefeller University, managing announcements of such biomedical research as the leptin discovery and studies by Dr. David Ho and his Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center colleagues, conducted at RU. Marion became Vice President, Corporate Communications, at Noonan/Russo Communications in 1997. An NASW member since 1993, she co-chairs Science Writers in New York. Marion holds an MA in journalism from the University of Maryland and a BS in biology from Muhlenberg College.
Robin Marantz Henig is a freelance writer based in Takoma Park, MD, the mecca of DC-area science writers. Her most recent book is The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel. She joined the NASW board in 1999 and was a member of the NASW workshop committee for the 2000 meeting, taking the lead (because it was her idea and she was lassoed into leadership-she learned the hard way that the NASW motto seems to be "You think of it, you do it") in organizing a series of hands-on workshops at NIH. The workshops were so successful, and her work on the board so much fun, that she's actually seeking reelection to another two-year term-and the chance to do it all again.
Earle Holland has been director of research communications at Ohio State University for 23 years. As senior science writer, he's responsible for reporting on university research and edits two national news services and has edited two periodicals. He teaches a graduate science-writing course in OSU's journalism school. As a freelancer, he has had a weekly column distributed through the New York Times Syndicate for the past five years. An incumbent board member, he produces the web version of ScienceWriters and serves on the membership and workshop committees. He's a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the "R2" group, and EurekAlert!'s national advisory committee and has served as a peer reviewer for both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. A former reporter for the Birmingham News, in Alabama, his programs have won more than 40 awards for excellence.
A.J. Hostetler is the science writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and has been a NASW member since 1986. Spurred by DCSWA's success, she started two regional groups while with the Associated Press in Philadelphia and Atlanta. If elected to the board, Hostetler will work to further develop NASW's relationship with the locals to keep the organizations vital and growing. She'd also seek new ways to improve our already successful education programs. Committed to encouraging young(er) science writers, she has participated in the NASW mentoring program over the past three years and supervises the T-D's annual AAAS Mass Media fellow.
Harvey Leifert has been an active NASW member for two years, since his appointment as the American Geophysical Union's public information manager. Through his participation in DCSWA and SCAMPI (Science Communication and Marine Public Information), he has learned much about the issues facing both reporters and PIOs. Leifert's formal science education ended with graduation from the Bronx High School of Science, but his continuing effort to understand the world and universe around him propelled him toward his current job. For most of his working life, Leifert was a foreign service officer with the U.S. Information Agency, conducting overseas media relations and cultural exchange programs. He was also a newswriter for the Associated Press and an editor and producer at Voice of America. During a four-year stint as president of a nonprofit organization, he learned the role and responsibilities of boards of directors, experience that would contribute to his effectiveness as a member of the NASW board.
Now completing her first term on the NASW board, Carol Cruzan Morton works both as a freelance journalist in the Boston area and as a science writer for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a major teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School. She has helped organize the last four annual NASW workshop programs, focusing on online media, computer-assisted reporting, and investigative reporting. She co-chairs the annual NASW Science-in-Society Journalism Awards, which for the first time offers new categories for online media and books. She co-chairs the NASW diversity committee, which aims to explore effective ways to encourage new voices and fresh perspectives in science writing. In the past 14 years, she has helped expand NASW regional activities in collaboration with local organizations, first in California and Oregon and now in New England. Morton remains committed to efforts to nurture the best public information practices, especially timely access to accurate information and a responsible journalistic approach to reporting and writing, and to help raise the standards and practices for freelance contracts, pay, and opportunities.
Powers serves as the Director of Outreach for NASA's Space Product Development Program and as a freelance, and has been a member of NASW since 1986. He is best known to NASW members as an active volunteer whose work included modernizing the old, all-caps, dot-matrix membership directory into a more readable and useful document. His roots are in journalism, starting in radio news and working his way from there into newspapers and magazines, and he served a photographic internship at Playboy as a result of a dare from the head of his undergraduate journalism program. He left full-time freelancing in 1998 to take up the challenge of developing an outreach program for the space commercialization efforts spearheaded by the Space Product Development Program. His goals on the board will be to address areas of concern to freelancers, especially for those who do both journalism and PR, and to encourage educational and mentoring programs.
Tammy Powledge has examined electronic publishing and other radical structural changes writers are facing in a regular ScienceWriters column on freelancing, which she has written since 1997. She contends that these technical and economic trends are affecting all science writers, not just freelances, and would like to see NASW give them more attention. She is a member of the NASW freelance committee and lives and works in Hollywood, MD, south of Washington, DC. Powledge was founding editor of The Scientist and also worked as an editor at (what is now) Nature Biotechnology and AAAS. She has freelanced full time since 1990. Long a contributing editor at Issues in Science and Technology, Powledge has written recently for Scientific American, Salon.com, Popular Science, IntellectualCapital.com, APBnews.com, the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, BioScience, Current Biology, EMBO Reports, and a lot of news and features for HMS Beagle/BioMedNet.com.
Joel Shurkin is a writer at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the former science editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and science writer at Stanford University, where he ran the science journalism internship program for a dozen years. Shurkin has been a member of NASW for more than 20 years and has served two terms on the NASW board. He was the founding chair of the NASW Freelance Committee and currently serves as chair of the NASW Science-in-Society Awards.