2004 Science in Society Journalism Awards

Newspaper

Alexandra Witze and Tom Siegfried

“Science’s Big Unknown” series

The Dallas Morning News

Description:

“Science’s Big Unknown,” a three-part series on nanotechnology, explored its health and environmental effects. Alexandra Witze and Tom Siegfried raised questions about the safety of nanotech months before any other major media outlet, the judges noted. Yet they offered a balanced examination of the early studies indicating the possible dangers of nanometer-sized particles that can penetrate living cells easily. The series also included an intriguing essay by Siegfried putting the suspected risks of nanotechnology in perspective against the scary "gray goo" scenarios painted in fictional accounts such as Michael Crichton’s thriller, Prey.

Read the articles:

Downside to downsizing

• page 1 (312 KB PDF)
• page 2 (196 KB PDF)

Nanotechnology on the march

• page 1 (596 KB PDF)
• page 2 (1.5 MB PDF)
• page 3 (232 KB PDF)

Biographies:

Alexandra Witze

Alexandra Witze is now the only fulltime science writer at The Dallas Morning News. Since 1996 she has written stories encompassing astronomy, geology, paleontology, chemistry, physics, archaeology, planetary science and more. Her coverage has taken her to the North Pole to report on climate-change research; to an ocean-drilling ship exploring gas hydrates off the coast of Oregon; to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the landings of multiple Mars missions; and among decaying corpses at the University of Tennessee’s legendary “Body Farm.” She has received writing awards from the American Geophysical Union and the Society for American Archaeology, among others.

Witze received a B.S. in earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later served as associate editor for Earth magazine. She lives in Dallas with her husband, astronomy writer Jeff Kanipe, and their two cats and dog.

Tom Siegfried

Tom Siegfried was born in Lakewood, Ohio, and grew up in nearby Avon. He received his bachelor of arts degree (with majors in journalism, chemistry and history) from Texas Christian University in 1974. He completed his master of arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin (with a journalism major and physics minor) in 1981.

He worked as a business and science writer at the Fort Worth Press and a journalism faculty member at Texas Christian University before joining The Dallas Morning News in 1983. From 1985 to 2004 he was the science editor at The Dallas Morning News.

His first book, The Bit and the Pendulum — a survey of the new physics of information — was published in 2000. His second book, Strange Matters — about phenomena yet to be discovered — was published in 2002. He is a contributor to NASW’s Field Guide for Science Writers. He has been a member of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing since 2000.

Tom’s work has earned various awards, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Westinghouse Award for large daily newspapers and the American Chemical Society’s James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. He has also received awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Texas Headliners club. He is among the writers whose work was included in The Best American Science Writing 2004.

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