NASW BOARD ELECTION CANDIDATE STATEMENTS

Election of the 2003-04 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 Joe Palca (NPR), and ably assisted by Richard Harris (NPR), Jon Van (Chicago Tribune), A.J. Hostetler (Richmond Times-Dispatch), Krishna Ramanujan (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), and John Cox (freelance), has assembled an outstanding slate of candidates.

NOTE: Any member can still become a candidate for the board by submitting a petition with the signatures of 20 NASW members to the NASW office. Petitions should be sent to NASW's new West Virginia headquarters.

DEADLINE: October 1.

OFFICER CANDIDATES

Deborah Blum-President

I was elected to the NASW board in 1992 and have served as treasurer and vice president. I am a freelance science journalist based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and recently completed my third book. Before joining the Wisconsin faculty, I worked as a staff science writer for the Sacramento Bee. I remain interested in regional science journalism and hope to continue to explore ways that NASW can support science writing around the country. I was among the original organizers of the NASW science writing workshops and have been involved with workshop organization ever since. I believe NASW should be active in improving science writing, not only through the workshops but other forums. I, along with Mary Knudson, co-edited A Field Guide for Science Writers. We're now discussing a second edition.

Laura van Dam-Vice President and President Elect

Having served as an NASW board member since 1997, and an officer since 1999, I have continuing and great interest in working with our membership. Over the years, I have been concerned with helping members who are relatively new to science writing, and I try to organize a panel each year at our annual workshop. This past year, along with my work as treasurer and as co-chair of the Membership Committee, I brought members' interests to the board and called for the new journalism policy committee that looks at issues that matter to science writers. I am now spending some time helping with the underpinnings of next year's workshops. During the day, I work as a senior editor at the book publisher Houghton Mifflin, acquiring and editing trade books concerning science. I previously worked as a senior editor at the magazine Technology Review, and also as a newspaper reporter.

Robert Lee Hotz-Treasurer

As treasurer, I will help to find ways for NASW to bolster its professional standards. I will work to broaden the organization's financial resources and sustain its excellent professional development programs. Furthermore, I also will help foster our Web site and Internet discussion groups, which already have done so much to knit together the organization's members across the country. As for my background, I am a science writer for The Los Angeles Times, which I joined almost a decade ago after many years as a science writer and editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I shared a 1995 Pulitzer Prize with my colleagues at The Times for coverage of the Northridge Earthquake and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1987 for coverage of genetic engineering issues in Atlanta. I have three times won the AAAS Science Journalism Award, as well as the Walter Sullivan Award from the American Geophysical Union, and the 2001 national magazine writing award from the Society for Professional Journalists. I am also a freelance writer and have been involved in several new media projects such as EurekAlert! and the LA Times Web site.

Carol Ezzell-Secretary

I have been a science writer and editor for more than 15 years, specializing in biomedicine and biology. I currently work at Scientific American, and have previously been at Nature, Bio/World, Science News, and the Journal of NIH Research. I've been active in science-writing organizations for most of my career. I was a long-time board member, program chair, and then president of DCSWA when I lived in D.C.; when I moved to NYC, I worked (with co-chair Marion Glick) to reinvigorate SWINY (Science Writers in New York). I stepped down as co-chair of SWINY in 2001 but have remained on the board as treasurer. My honors include the Science-in-Society Award, which I'm co-chairing with Peggy Girshman this year. I think I'll make a nifty Secretary for NASW--especially since I'll get my own chair this time.

MEMBERS-AT-LARGE CANDIDATES

Janet Basu

I am a senior public information representative at the University of California, San Francisco, primarily covering research and clinical care in pediatrics (that is, all medical specialties, small and growing patients). Previously, as a PIO for Stanford University, I covered biological and earth sciences. As a freelance writer, I have written about engineering, medicine, health, the environment and the process of science. My column on the health news behind the headlines won the late, great, Hippocrates magazine its first Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Award gold medal. I am past president of the Northern California Science Writers Association and-among my proudest accomplishments-teacher and mentor to many current NASW members.

Beryl Benderly

In these turbulent times in the writing business, all writers need knowledge, flexibility, and solidarity to adapt and prosper amidst rapid change. Fostering these values has been the theme of my board service. As co-chair of the Science-in-Society Award committee, I helped expand the prizes to reflect the full range of today's media. As chair of the Freelance Committee, I organized the first survey of our freelance members, arranged annual workshop events, and built collaborative relationships with other writers' groups. I serve as NASW's liaison with the Creators Network, an information consortium, and have represented NASW at a national meeting of writers' organizations on protecting electronic rights. There I learned of the Authors Coalition of America, a national organization that distributes overseas funds to American writers' organizations. Further research revealed that NASW could become a member and receive annual payments that would benefit all our members. Since then, I have spearheaded the drive to gain NASW its rightful place in this important, internationally affiliated alliance of over 100,000 American creators, along with the steady, no-strings funding that membership will provide. But much more work remains to be done. I ask for your vote so that I can continue doing it.

Kathryn Brown

Currently a correspondent at Science magazine, I've been a freelance journalist for 10 years-writing for a colorful mix of magazines, including Scientific American, Smithsonian, New Scientist, and Discover. My favorite assignments explore our own backyards, from flower biochemistry to industrial wastelands. Along the way, I've had the chance to help establish NASW's Freelance Committee and Freelance Web site. Now, I'd like to build on these efforts. Should NASW offer freelancers specific information on magazines and markets? Can NASW better represent freelancers at all levels? As a member of the board, I'd work to sharpen our freelance tools and make NASW more useful.

Glennda Chui

I've been a science reporter for the San Jose Mercury News in California for 15 years, covering everything from astronomy to global change to nanotechnology. I also teach news writing in the UC-Santa Cruz science communication program. I hold a B.S. in biology from Cal State Hayward and a master's degree in journalism from UC-Berkeley, and was a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT in 1988-89. I've been a member of the Northern California Science Writers Association pretty much since it started 24 years ago, and have served on the board and as president. I'm now on the NASW Education Committee, working with John Travis to collect course materials from people who teach science writing and post them on the Web.

Mariette DiChristina

I'm the executive editor at Scientific American, and have been a journalist for the past 16 years. Like many NASW members, I was drawn to science writing by my endless curiosity about how the world works and a desire to educate and entertain readers with good storytelling. As such, I'm keenly interested in fostering the development of beginning science writers, doing so through the NASW mentoring program, which I've co-coordinated since 1998; the NASW Education Committee, which I've co-chaired since 1999; and in running internships at Scientific American. Since June 2001, I've been chair of the board of Science Writers in New York, and I am eager to expand my role in NASW with a seat on the national board.

Jon Franklin

I am a long-time science writer known for my innovative stories about research and the culture of science. My credits include five books, the Grady medal, inaugural Pulitzers in the feature writing and explanatory journalism categories, and a special Penney-Missouri award. I am a veteran of 22 years' science reporting for newspapers and magazines; my academic career includes the leadership of a science writing department and a creative writing program. The founder and moderator of WriterL, I am currently the Philip Merrill professor of journalism at the University of Maryland. I have served one term on the board.

Robin Marantz Henig

Maybe it's because I'm a full-time freelance writer that my work on the NASW board for the past four years has been so satisfying-it's the only way I have colleagues anymore! I relish the chance to help shape our professional group into a body that has a serious, issues-oriented public face, as well as a friendlier private side. I've also enjoyed thinking about and teaching the craft of science writing, most recently as a faculty member at the Santa Fe Writing Workshop in 2002, and as science-writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin in 1999. I've written seven books, the last one being The Monk in the Garden, and over the past 25 years have contributed to The New York Times Magazine, Civilization, Discover, and just about every women's magazine at the supermarket. I received an Alicia Patterson Foundation grant in 2001 to research the history of science writing, with a focus on the first modern science writer, Paul de Kruif. Right now I'm writing a book about the early days of in vitro fertilization, and adjusting to the major lifestyle change of moving my suddenly empty nest from Takoma Park, Md., to New York City.

Richard Hill

NASW has been very helpful to me in my career, and I want to express my appreciation to the organization by playing a more active role in furthering its goals. I would like to serve on the board so that I can work with other members in developing programs that would encourage news media organizations to provide more emphasis to science coverage in the communities they serve. My perception is that jobs for science journalists haven't been increasing, and perhaps have even been declining. I'd like to develop a program-perhaps in conjunction with AAAS, AGU, and other science organizations-to foster more interest in science news and provide more employment opportunities for science writers. I have been covering science for The Oregonian and its weekly "Science" section for nearly 15 years. I have been an NASW member since 1989. In the past two years, I've received AGU's David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism-News and the C.B. Blethen Memorial Award for Distinguished Reporting. Prior to coming to The Oregonian, I worked at The Dallas Times Herald and The Christian Science Monitor. I have a journalism degree from the University of Texas.

Kim McDonald

Since leaving the Chronicle of Higher Education two years ago for the campus of UCSD and the sunny beaches of San Diego, I've spent much of my time trying to improve journalists' access to scientists and their sources of information. I worked with EurekAlert! to create an international database of science experts and in-context modules, which compile information on specific topics for science reporters and generalists. I'm hoping to do more with streaming video and to continue to work with my colleagues at other research institutions and scientific societies to improve the access to and content of science information. I spent 19 years covering and editing science for the Chronicle of Higher Education, am on the EurekAlert! advisory board, and for many years served on the managing committee for the AAAS-Whitaker Science Journalism Awards. I'm now the director of science communications at UC San Diego in La Jolla.

Carol Cruzan Morton

On staff at Harvard Medical School, I write about new biomedical research news. A Boston-based freelance writer, I contribute regularly to the health and science section of the Boston Globe and other publications. I'm training to become a convergence reporter, an emerging specialty where a journalist reports and produces a news or feature story for many media, including newspaper, radio, and television. To that end, this past year I organized three multimedia training workshops for like-minded journalists from NASW, New England Science Writers, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. Before and during my first two terms on the board, I helped organize four of the annual NASW workshop programs, focusing on online media, computer-assisted reporting, and investigative reporting. For the last two years, I co-chaired the annual NASW Science-in-Society Journalism Awards, which for the first time offered new categories for online media and books. In the past 20 years, I helped expand NASW regional activities and link up with other journalism organizations, first in Oregon and California and now in New England. I remain 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.

Tabitha M. Powledge

Electronic publishing and other radical structural changes in markets for both freelance and staff writers now dominate our work lives. Since 1997 I have examined those changes regularly in a ScienceWriters column, The Free Lance. I first ran for the board two years ago because I thought NASW ought to pay more attention to such developments. It has begun to do so, and I believe I have helped nudge that process along. At the February membership meeting we established a new policy committee, a step I urged strongly. It gives NASW a formal way of tracking and responding to policy matters (like contract issues and government restrictions on freedom of information) and a mechanism for collaborating with other writers' organizations. I have been founding editor of The Scientist, an editor at what is now Nature Biotechnology and AAAS, and long a Contributing Editor for the National Academy of Science's policy quarterly, Issues in Science and Technology. A full-time freelance since 1990, I have written in the past few years for Scientific American, Popular Science, The Washington Post, National Institute for General Medical Sciences, BioScience, Current Biology, EMBO Reports, and Webzines such as Salon.com, BioMed Central.com/The Scientist, and HMS Beagle/BioMedNet.com.

Nancy Shute

I've been through many mutations as a journalist-from a small-town newspaper and television reporter in Idaho, on to covering Congress and the Supreme Court, then 13 happy years freelancing for magazines including Outside, Health, and Smithsonian. In the early 1990s, I founded the first bilingual newspaper in Kamchatka, Russia, on a Fulbright. For the past five years I've been a writer and editor at U.S. News & World Report, which has included directing the magazine's science coverage, and reporting on biomedicine and health care. No matter what kind of journalism I've been doing, NASW has been a big help. Through NASW, I've learned how to be a better writer and reporter, how to make freelancing pay, and how to survive in corporate journalism. I've also met hundreds of terrific people, each practicing science writing in a different way. NASW's diversity in members is its greatest strength. I'd like to help NASW maintain its strong financial footing, continue to expand the workshops, and assure that the organization continues to bring something of value to all members.

Curt Suplee

For the past 18 months, I've been the director of the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation. Before that, I spent 25 years at The Washington Post in a variety of fairly respectable capacities including science reporter, science/medicine editor and editor of Horizon, a science-education section that was canceled because it very conspicuously failed to make money. I've also written numerous magazine articles for National Geographic and other journals, as well as three books, notably including Physics in the 20th Century. I've won the AAAS Science Journalism Award and the American Chemical Society's Grady-Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry to the Public, along with some other stuff.

Kelli Whitlock

I have been a member of NASW for seven years and co-chair of the Education Committee and mentoring program since 1997. When I joined NASW, I was a science writer at Ohio State University. In 1996, I moved to Ohio University, where I now serve as editor of the award-winning Perspectives research magazine and director of the university's efforts to share accurate and balanced research news with a public whose tax dollars support our work. I have bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism and will teach a new course in science writing at OU this fall. I first learned of NASW in 1995-five years after I began covering science and medicine as a reporter for The Tuscaloosa News in Alabama. While I regret that I didn't discover NASW at the outset of my career, I know of many science writers who spent 10 years or more before stumbling across our organization. NASW has undergone many changes in the last seven years-development of annual workshops, expansion of the listservs, the growth of the mentoring program, and, of course, a revision of our constitution. But we need to do more, including increasing our outreach efforts for journalism students and professionals who don't know we exist. I'd like to be a part of that process.

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