|
| Volume 50, Number 1, Winter 2000-2001 |
OUR GANGby Rick Borchelt Jim Cornell reports that he's finally severed the golden thread that kept him in thrall to the federal government at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He'll be spending his time freelancing from Boston and rehabbing his home in Tucson, and plans to devote more energy to the International Science Writers Association, of which he is president. Also in the stars this issue is Mark Perew, sciences correspondent for The American Reporter, who was named a Solar System Ambassador by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Solar System Ambassadors Program is a public outreach program designed to work with motivated volunteers across the nation, who are asked to organize and conduct public events that communicate exciting discoveries and plans for exploration through nontraditional forums like Rotary Clubs, libraries, shopping malls, and the like. Leaving one astronomy universe for another, Rebecca Johnson has left her post as public information officer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory headquarters, in Charlottesville, VA, to become editor of StarDate magazine, in Austin, TX. StarDate is the nonprofit bimonthly astronomy mag brought to you by the University of Texas McDonald Observatory. And our last star date for this issue is Robert Naeye, who is leaving the position of senior editor at Astronomy magazine to become the new editor of Mercury magazine. Mercury is a bimonthly magazine with an eclectic mix of articles about astronomy research, observation, history, education, and culture, published in San Francisco by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The peripatetic Cathy Yarborough has left NIH's Human Genome Research Institute for a job as executive director of communications at pharmaceutical giant Novartis. Reach her at cathy.yarbrough@pharma.Novartis.com. John Travis is missing a very cold DC winter to pursue a six-month gig as science writer in residence at the University of Arizona Tucson. He's begging for Arizona visitors to guest lecture in his classes. Maybe Jim Cornell can sign him up to do carpentry on the new house? Freelance Bob Zimmerman is just back from Hawaii, where the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society named him a co-winner of the first David N. Schramm Award for High Energy Astrophysics Science Journalism. Bob won for his essay on gamma-ray bursts, which appeared in the January/February 2000 issue of The Sciences. US News & World Report has been on a hiring spree, reports senior writer Nancy Shute. They've just lured DC New Scientist veteran Nell Boyce over to the shop, as well as Canadian Tom Hayden (who doesn't get boldface for his name because he isn't a member yet but Nancy has promised his membership as a Xmas present for NASW), whom they cherry-picked from Newsweek. Lee Siegel becomes the latest journalism pro to turn to public affairs. After a short-lived stint with the Lou Dobbs cyber-venture space.com (Lee and a dozen other writers were sacked in an attempt to stop the red ink hemorrhage at the ailing webzine), Lee joins the public information staff at the University of Utah. Kelli Miller has resurfaced as executive producer for a science discoveries component of multimedia firm NewsProNet Productions. Kelli comes to NewsProNet from The Weather Channel and Inside Science TV News. Terry Devitt has been named an assistant director in the office of University Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with the working title of director of research communications. Won't interfere with his real job, we hope, which is project coordinator and editor of The Why Files, a Web site that explores issues of science and technology that lurk behind the news of the day. Another dot-com downsizing claimed the WebMD job of Roberta Friedman, who has returned to active freelancing (with an emphasis on medicine and genomics) from her Santa Cruz, CA home. Ira Flatow, host and executive producer of NPR's Science Friday, received the Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum Of Science at a ceremony in November. The award, named for a director of the museum, consists of a golden medal and a $10,000 honorarium. It's given to "an individual . . . who has made an outstanding contribution toward public understanding of science, appreciation of its fascination, and the vial role it plays in all of our lives." Ira's in good company; past winners of the award include Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Walter Sullivan, Carl Sagan, and E.O. Wilson. New year, new kids. DCSWA president Lisa Orange showed off her new son, Connor William Pugh, at the DCSWA holiday bash in December. Mariette DiChristina of Popular Science has similar happy news this issue, a second daughter Mallory Claire Gerosa. Fortune smiles on Deborah Franklin, who's now a senior writer at Fortune Magazine. She's sharing the science/medicine/biotech beat with David Stipp; Deborah will remain in San Francisco while David covers the beat from Boston. In the medical film industry, the Oscar goes by the name of Freddie--and this year, Freddie's going home with Charlotte Beyers, president of Peregrine Productions and producer of "Our Own Road," a documentary about a model program of community-based care for disabled children and drug-war casualties in a remote Mexican village. The program, Proyecto PROJIMO, was founded in 1981 in the village of Ajoya, in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental and 100 miles north of Mazatlan. PROJIMO has seen more than 300 spinal cord injuries, mainly young men injured by gunfire in the drug trade." Our Own Road" also has been chosen as a finalist in the New York Film Festival and for the New York International Latino Film Festival, and received a creative excellence award from the U.S. International Film and Video Festival. KQED-TV is scheduled to air the film later this winter. We're probably going to have to reserve a permanent slot in this column for Robin Marantz Henig. This issue, we're happy to report that Robin has been selected to receive American journalism's oldest writing fellowship, an Alicia Patterson Foundation grant. One of nine grantees, she'll receive a stipend and will spend her year traveling, researching, and writing for her project, "Bringing Science to the People: The Life and Legacy of Paul de Kruif, the First Modern Science Writer." Rick Borchelt is outreach strategist in the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy. Send hot NASW-related gossip to Rick at rborchelt@nasw.org, or phone him at 202-586-6702. |