Jon Franklin has returned to daily journalism as science writer at the Raleigh News and Observer and can be reached there at PO Box 191, 215 South McDowell St., Raleigh NC, 27602.
Anita Manning, USA Today, and Mike Stobbe, Florida Times-Union, will spend three weeks studying at the National Institutes of Health under a new program of fellowships awarded by the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. Manning will study infectious diseases and Stobbe will study diabetes. The Center is located at the College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park.
Deborah Halber has been appointed science writer in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology news office. Previously she worked in a similar capacity at Tufts University.
Mariette DiChristina has been promoted to executive editor of Popular Science from her previous post as senior editor. She has been with the magazine for ten years.
Dennis Overbye is now deputy science editor at the New York Times. He is reachable at doverbye@nytimes.com.
Debra Gordon has begun a new job as medical reporter for the Orange County Register in southern California.
Carol Ezzell, formerly at the late and lamented Journal of NIH Research, has moved to New York City to join the board of editors at Scientific American.
Cheryl Greenhouse, formerly of the National Academy of Sciences, is returning to the Washington area from Boston, where she’d been working at Genzyme Corp. She is opening her own communications firm.
Arthur Fisher, science editor emeritus at Popular Science, won a 1997 Engineering Journalism Award for his story “World’s Largest Dam,” which appeared in the August 1966 single-topic PS on Chinese science and technology that he assembled and edited. The $5,000 award is given by the Engineering Foundation and the American Association of Engineering Societies. It will be presented on May 4 in Washington, DC at the AAES Awards Dinner.
Wilson da Silva picked up a Human Rights Award for Journalism handed out by Australia’s Human Rights Commission in December for a feature article on the Nobel Prizes and the politics that surround them, focusing on the 1996 Nobel Peace laureate Jose Ramos Horta and the long-festering political question of East Timor, which was the cover story of the April 1997 issue of “The Australian Financial Review Magazine.”
Stephen Braun’s new book, Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine, took first place in the trade category of this year’s National Medical Book Awards Competition sponsored by the American Medical Writers Association. Buzz was published in hardcover by Oxford University Press and is now available in paperback by Viking/Penguin.
Joe Alper has left NeXstar Pharmaceuticals to return to freelancing. He will remain in Colorado where he hopes the constant presence of the mountains won’t distract him too much from writing. He adds that his three years inside a biotech company, first as the director for corporate communications and then as director of strategic planning, were interesting, but that when his five-year period of confidentiality expires there will be a book waiting to be written about how amateurish even the best biotech companies are at doing business.
Erich Hoyt has two books coming out in March: The Nature Company Guide to Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises (Discovery Channel, Time Life Books) co-authored and co-edited by Hoyt, and a high-quality, large-format softcover version of his Seasons of the Whale, first published in 1990 and now offered by the Humane Society of the United States, with separate, simultaneous Canadian and British editions.
After 17 years as a freelancer, Randi Londer Gould now works full-time for PRR, Inc., as editor of a new consumer health magazine called InTouch: The Good Health Guide to Cancer Prevention and Treatment.
Susan O’Hear Brown has retired as editor of medical publications at the University of Alabama (Birmingham). She will continue as a consultant to UAB and also take on freelance assignments later this year. Reach her at Medical Writing Consultants, 215 Cross Ridge Rd., Birmingham, AL 35213; tel: 205-871-2526; fax: 205-871-0741; e-mail: susanbrown2@compuserve.com.
After 25 years at the San Francisco Chronicle, Charlie Petit has accepted an invitation to join the science writing staff of U.S. News and World Report. He will continue to be based in San Francisco.
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