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| Volume 49, Number 3, Fall 2000 |
OUR GANGby Rick Borchelt A'ndrea Messer, science and research information officer at Penn State, spent the summer doing an archeological survey at the base of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado. Proof positive that we live in a virtual world, almost none of us knew she was in the wilds of Colorado for four months, since she did all her assistant sysop duties for NASW remotely the entire time. A'ndrea swears the fires at Mesa Verde started after she left and had nothing to do with that magnifying glass she left lying around. Blake Powers got a promotion with his employer, CST Inc., which provides contract writing and outreach services for NASA's Space Product Development Program. Blake works out of the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, where his new title is director of outreach. Diana Steele has taken her freelance career on the road from Chicago (where she freelanced and spent time at the University of Chicago news office) to San Diego, where her hubby has snagged a gig in neuroscience at The Salk Institute. Diana's freelancing (mostly for the Dallas Morning News, she reports, though she's never been to Dallas). Dot Sparer, formerly communications manager for the North American HQ of Rhone-Merieux (now Merial) in Athens, GA, is the new director of public relations for the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia in Athens. Dot notes she wasn't particularly keen to follow her job to New Jersey when Merial merged with Merck. Mary Nucci (freelance, NJ) recently organized a very successful "NASW Meets the ASTC" in Cleveland. The ASTC--Association of Science-Technology Centers--is home to a plethora of writers for museum exhibits and science centers (and their Web sites), and Mary rightly thought it would be useful to build some bridges between the two organizations. Participating NASW panelists included Gail Porter (NIST), Bonnie Wallace (California Science Center), Jenni Laidman (Toledo Blade), Mary Miller (San Francisco Exploratorium), and Chris Curran (University of Cincinnati). Linda Sage has moved from the public affairs office of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to gorgeous Eugene, OR, where she is a freelance science writer and editor. She can be reached at sages@dellnet.com. Laura Tangley has left US News & World Report to become dual senior editor for both National Wildlife and International Wildlife magazines. She gets to stay in the DC metro area. Jim Dawson, formerly of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, has joined the DC-based staff of Physics Today in the slot vacated by retiree (and Washington institution) Irwin Goodwin. Lori Cuthbert has been promoted to managing editor, news, at Discovery.com. She will be running the news operations for Discovery.com, including briefs and features. Doug Levy has left PlanetRx.com to become a vice president at PR agency Fleishman Hillard. Based in FH's San Francisco office, he'll be working on a variety of healthcare and technology accounts. Doug originally went to the West Coast from his position as tech writer at USA Today. Show-Me-State freelance Kathryn Brown has left Columbia, MO, and traveled east to Alexandria, VA, where she has even more and better freelance gigs. She's also the recent recipient of the Acoustical Society of America's 1999 Science Writing Award for a series she wrote for New Scientist. David Lewin, who joined the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) only about a year ago, received the AHRQ Director's Award for Excellence for editing the Report to the President of the Quality Interagency Task Force on Medical Errors. The report, Doing What Counts for Patient Safety: Federal Actions to Reduce Medical Errors and Their Impact, was released to the public by President Clinton in February 2000. This document represented the federal response to the Institute of Medicine's report on medical errors. Robin Marantz Henig's new book, The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, continues to top the charts at Chuck and Dave's Books in Takoma Park, MD. Seriously, it's number four on the list as we go to press--very literate folks, those Takoma Parkans. Sales got a big boost from Robin's gig on C-SPAN, which aired a book-reading Robin did at Bibelot Books in Baltimore. Robin and family are spending the year in New York City, thanks to a fellowship her husband received from the Russell Sage Foundation. Robin's also recently been treated to the ineffable interview style of our own Prez Joe Palca, as guest host of NPR's Science Friday. Jim Kling has broken into the science-fiction market with two stories over the summer-one in the Futures section of Nature (August 31), called "The Flaw is Human: The End of the Human Genome Reclamation Project," and the other on the Web site HMS Beagle on August 4, called Lactose Intolerance. Sometimes, fiction is still stranger than truth. After almost five years as a senior editor who stole time from his editing to write pieces at Business Week, Paul Raeburn recently switched gears at BW to become a senior writer. His first gig took him to Africa on a big project which should have seen print by the time you read this. And he'll be a regular commentator on NPR's Morning Edition. Sandra Katzman's most current Japanese visa says "professor"- she's now teaching English at the Japanese National Defense Academy, in Yokosuka. She continues to freelance, including among her clients are EMBO Reports, the magazine of the European Molecular Biology Organization (intl-embo-reports.oupjournals.org) and the three publications of GenomeWeb (www.genomeweb.org). Sandra credits the NASW job bank for leading her to these jobs. Elia Ben-Ari has forsaken the relative security of BioScience (where she was features editor) for the world of freelance journalism. She also hopes to explore concepts for a children's book she has in mind. She'll continue to work in the DC metro area. Wedding bells resounded from the farm of Nell Boyce's (New Scientist) parents in Fisherville, VA, in September as she married David Greenfield. The incessant rain and gobs of mud prompted the wedding party to shove the hay aside in the barn and hold the nuptials there. NASWers in attendance included Baltimore freelance Ann Finkbeiner, Science Magazine writer Charles Seife, freelance Kate O'Rourke, Marjorie Centofanti of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution's public affairs office, and San Francisco-based New Scientist writer Jonathan Knight. Jonathan, as it happens, walked down the aisle with his sweetheart just a week later. And as we went to press, DC-based New Scientist writer Adrian Cho was about to tie the knot too. Hmmmm. A new family policy at New Scientist? Gunjan Sinha, an associate editor at Popular Science, has won this year's Ray Bruner Science Writing Award for several feature articles. Established in 1971, the award commemorates Ray Bruner, former science editor of the Toledo Blade (Ohio) newspaper, who spent much of his 40-year career encouraging young journalists to become science writers. Sponsored by the American Public Health Association, the award is presented annually to a health/medical/science journalist early in his or her reporting career. Curt Suplee has left the Washington Post to head the National Science Foundation's Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. The NSF job entails media relations, publications, speechwriting, professional societies, and government relations as part of its purview, so Curt will have his hands full. This isn't Curt's first foray into public relations; he was press aide to the late Sen. Hubert Humphrey before his 20-year career at the Post.
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