The digital media age serves up uncertainty as well as opportunity. One solution to the anemic job pool for science writers is to grow beyond journalism into entrepreneurship, specifically into digital publishing. Training for this kind of career growth is exactly what the Knight Digital Media Center offers in its intensive, weeklong workshop called Independent Journalist. From the Fall 2011 ScienceWriters.
Science writing news
By the time WCSJ2011 opened in late June, organizers felt entitled to breathe a sigh of relief. The biennial international conference had come together despite a last-minute relocation from conflict-ridden Cairo, Egypt, to Doha, Qatar, and the attendees had arrived mostly without incident. All seemed well. Until about the third day. From the Fall 2011 ScienceWriters.
Three sessions from our recent Flagstaff conference were caught on video and are now available for viewing on our conference reports page. They are: "Straight to the Source: Helping Scientists Speak Directly to the Press," "How to Sell That Story You Can't Let Go," and "Science News, Spot News, or Both? Managing and Covering Science Protests." Also available is an audio recording of "Writing about Science for Non-Science Publications."
More untrustworthy social science research, only this time outright fraud. That database of naughty docs has been restored to public view, thanks to journalism organizations. The government appears to have taken it down after pressure by one of them, a neurosurgeon with 16 malpractice complaints.
We often want to know the history of something (cars, relationships, pets) before we invest in it. Learning about the past helps us understand how things, people, and ideas got to where they are today. But often the history or story behind an idea gets left out of science writing. From the Fall 2011 ScienceWriters.
Can social science research be trusted? The Open Notebook has a birthday. Here comes the HPV vaccine again. ScienceOnline2012 registration begins next week!
ScienceWriters2011: reports, photos, tweets. The malaria vaccine interim report. Should science journos let sources fact-check their stuff? The Scientist rises from the dead, hurrah!
Reports are coming in quickly from the ScienceWriters2011 conference in Flagstaff, Ariz. You can read the first seven reports on our conference reports page. They include "Crossing over to non-science publications," "You're not going to print that, are you? Handling difficult interviewees," and "Exploring longform narrative story structure." More reports will be posted on Monday. Also, it's time to start thinking about ScienceWriters2012.
Field trips on forest and range science management near our Flagstaff, Ariz., meeting site, workshops on audio and video production, and a welcome reception are among today's highlights at "a meeting for science writers, by science writers." If you are unable to attend, you can follow the Twitter hashtag #sciwri11 or just check this page, where Purdue University is aggregating tweets. Watch this space over the weekend for further reports.
The Scientist is dead. The Bolshoi Simulation: It's Life, the Universe, and Everything. Except Life.
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