WCSJ2015 provided a forum for science journalism to discuss the demands of our changing times, forge new and renewed professional networks, and savor Korean culture. Undeterred by an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the 9th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) took place June 8 to 12, in Seoul, South Korea.
Science writing news
"We moved three times the first 10 years, and, honestly, it posed no hardship because two moves brought us to the vicinity of Washington, D.C., where there’s a large science writing community, as well as lots of writing jobs that generally pay well," Brittany Moya del Pino writes. "However, when we moved to the Hawaiian island of Oahu last summer, the situation was quite different. This is the story of how I’ve been dealing with that difference, which at times was so great that it felt as if I had moved to a foreign country."
Matt Shipman, a university public information officer, wrote the book he wished he’d had when he started his career.
What happens when you cross a beloved and compelling theory, a bevy of intensely competitive experiments on a highly technical subject, with a top-secret press conference, tight deadlines, and the desire to tell an exciting story? Perhaps you get the ascent and fall of BICEP2.
Cambridge, Mass., isn’t simply the home of top research universities like MIT and Harvard. Acre for acre, the Kendall Square area around MIT boasts the highest density of academic, corporate, and startup R&D activity in the world. The Brookings Institution calls Kendall Square “today’s iconic innovation district.” All of which makes it the perfect setting for ScienceWriters2015, coming to MIT Oct. 9-13. Also, NASW and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing will host the 10th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) in fall 2017 in San Francisco.
In Networking for Nerds, Alaina Levine offers tips on why and how to network to both early-career and established scientists and engineers.
"There has been a spate of research papers recently about how and why different audiences acquire and react to news; sometimes about science and sometimes about news more generally," Rick Borchelt writes. "Two captured my attention for what they can offer science communicators as we daily confront changes in the news landscape."
As Raphael Rosen explains in Math Geek, mathematics permeates everyday life, from the shapes of broccoli to the bunching of buses on their routes.
The work of science exposition calls for people who make a career of it, Victor McElheny writes. They must have a course of development to follow, as a serial entrepreneur like George Scangos, the CEO of Biogen Idec (to choose an example from the particularly strident atmosphere of biotechnology), could tell us. Careers, accumulations of experience, imply structures with standards. And science journalists have to be more like intellectuals than most journalists. They have to stay at it longer to get good.
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