Poynter's Beth Winegarner lists a half-dozen ways for freelancers to build their businesses. Many of them boil down to finding a network and making the most of it: "Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, connecting with fellow freelancers has never been easier. Knowing who’s writing, and who they’re writing for, gives you a good sense of which publications are open to taking freelance work," Winegarner writes. Also, do your homework, and "pitch more than you can write."
Science writing news
The winner of the 2012 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, is Gayathri Vaidyanathan. Vaidyanathan received the award and its $1,000 prize for two stories in Nature, “The Wheat Stalker” and “The Cultured Chimpanzees;” one story in Greenwire,“Study ignites fresh concerns about drilling emissions;” and a story in Energywire, “Could risk analysis prevent future deepwater disasters?”
Jonah Lehrer resurfaces briefly to announce that he's writing about fraudulent science writing. What a surprise. Genetically manipulated organisms, giant rat tumors, and how to promote a book and movie. Scientific research declares that bad science writing is all the fault of scientists.
Sid Caesar once said that comedy has to be based on truth. By that measure, the humorous cover design of the 2011 annual report for Research Communications at Ohio State was based on the truth that the four people then on staff — Earle Holland, Jeff Grabmeier, Emily Caldwell, and Pam Frost Gorder — are, fundamentally, extreme personalities. From the Summer 2012 ScienceWriters.
The mouse retrovirus XMRV does not cause chronic fatigue syndrome, but there's more, much more. XMRV doesn't cause prostate cancer either. But, you heard it here first, maybe some other infection does? Should PLoS have retracted the prostate cancer paper without consulting the authors? Plus, savor the big book of best science blogging.
NASW is pleased to offer over $10,000 in travel fellowships this year to assist science writers with travel and registration costs for the ScienceWriters2012 meeting. Read more to see the winners.
The days when a beginning journalist was surrounded by a newsroom full of experienced colleagues may be gone now, Jillian Keenan writes on the Poynter site: "I fell in love with the freedom and flexibility of independent journalism, but there was one problem: without long-term editors to supervise my work, it seemed like I’d never find those inspiring mentors I had imagined." Keenan offers five tips for freelancers who want to fill the gap by finding their own mentors.
New York City's Health Department is requiring parental consent for a specific form of Jewish ritual circumcision amid claims that it interferes with religious freedom. The pediatricians' official claim that circumcision is good for you and prevents disease appears to be preaching to the converted. How are bloggers at Discover paid? An encore for the ENCORE dispute. What does it mean to say 80% of the human genome is functional?
With 670 participants and more than 450 speakers, panelists, and various performers using different presentation formats, the International Conference of Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) took place in Florence, Italy, in April, and was hailed as a success. The 12th of a series, this year’s conference was dedicated to “quality, honesty, and beauty in science and technology communication.” From the Summer 2012 ScienceWriters.
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