We've all been there: struggling to find a narrative, lede or metaphor to make a complicated science story understandable to the general public. Writers Michael D. Lemonick and Michael Shermer tried to explain their methods at a NASW 2007 Session, but in some cases left the audience wishing for more details.
Event coverage
Coverage begins in 2006 for the ScienceWriters meeting and 2009 for the AAAS meeting. To see programs for past ScienceWriters meetings, go to the ScienceWriters meeting site.
NASW took place as baseball's best were on the verge of a World Series — and players and writers alike worked to perfect their pitches.
The speakers at "Taming the Digital Office" would find it odd, perhaps even perverse, that I'm drafting this story using pen and paper. My work style is clearly very different from that of the computer-savvy members of the panel.
Session organizer and freelancer Karyn Hede designed this session for the 2007 NASW Science in Society meeting to spotlight intersections between food, wine, and science, and to suggest new story ideas in this field. As she noted, food safety stories have important science elements. For example, the nationwide outbreak of E. Coli 0157:H7 in 2006 that was traced to California spinach raised questions about how to avoid similar contamination and how often produce should be tested.
Science writers are in the business of communicating real, worthwhile, exciting science — working either as science journalists or public information officers. It's not about the job title; it's about communicating new scientific discoveries to the intended audience.
Starting a science Web log probably won't finance your retirement, but it could boost your career in other ways, said Chris Mooney, Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and senior correspondent for The American Prospect. Mooney's comments were part of a panel at NASW's "Navigating the New Media" session.
It all comes down to the pitch. Whether a story idea lives or dies depends on the writer's ability to pitch it to an editor quickly, clearly, and with pizzazz. At the lively "Pitch Slam" session, writers queued up to pitch their ideas to a high-powered panel of editors, who dissected each pitch like doctors in an operating room theater, providing valuable lessons on the anatomy of a successful pitch for all who attended.
"Podcasting is about content," Ivan Semeniuk told the crowd of roughly 100 assembled for the Podcasting 101 session at the 2006 NASW Conference. "But I want to add one more layer to that: it's about identity." Semenuik, the host and producer of New Scientist's "Sci-Pod," and the four other panelists returned repeatedly to the themes of creating identity and grappling with technology as they explained the fundamentals of podcasting — from getting good sound quality for phone-recorded interviews to marketing techniques for recruiting more listeners.