Deborah Blum

President’s Letter

by Deborah Blum

First, it was great to see so many of you at our Denver meeting. Contrary to all predictions-including our own-we had more than 300 science writers at the 2003 annual conference, matching last year’s workshops in Boston. Both NASW and the Rocky Mountain science writers hosted well-attended parties (okay, theirs had salsa dancing and ours didn’t). We hope to see an even bigger crowd at next year’s meeting in Seattle.

And we’ve continued to follow through with many of the programs and promises brought up at the business meeting in Denver. Our new partnership with the Author’s Coalition, which provides photocopying copyright payments from Europe, has delivered a first check of about $7,600. Let’s once again toast board member Beryl Benderly, who worked tirelessly to make this partnership happen. And thanks also to the Author’s Coalition itself, which works so hard to make sure that writers earn their due.

The coalition requires that we spend the money on programs that provide a service to writers. There goes that Jamaican retreat for board members. Instead, we’re planning to invest in an online market database, which could provide information on publications, their pay-rates, author guidelines, and which could be regularly updated. We’re just beginning to organize that.

We are also developing our first workshop program to be offered at the annual fall meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. We would like thank CASW for making this possible. We’ve long hoped to offer some of our training workshops at a more regional level and this program, which will be shorter (an afternoon only) and tightly focused on issues, such as risk communication, offers us a terrific way to begin.

The workshop will be held on Sat., Oct. 25, 2003, just ahead of the CASW meeting, which is Oct. 26-29, and is hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee. So far we have an advisory board consisting of former NASW president Paul Raeburn, who also sits on the CASW board; Rick Borchelt, of the Whitehead Institute; Dennis Meredith, of Duke University; David Salisbury, of Vanderbilt University; and myself. Our organizer for the meeting is Tinsley Davis, of the Boston Museum of Science. Look for further announcements and a more detailed description of the event as we continue putting this new venture together.

And finally, I’d like to discuss the renewal of an old NASW venture, our book, A Field Guide for Science Writers. The book was one of the mid-1990s projects that the board took on in a push to offer more member services. Mary Knudson, a medical freelancer, and I edited it when we were both members-at-large. The book is a blend of how-to advice written by some of the best science writers in the country and essays on good science writing itself.

It has a short forward written by the late, great Carl Sagan (who donated his time and thoughts from a hospital bed when he was in the final stages of his illness) and a collection of more than 30 chapters on everything from how to freelance to the intricacies of writing about physics. According to our publisher, Oxford University Press, it has sold more than 12,000 copies.

In all modesty, it’s a great resource. But it was put together in 1997 and it is starting to show its age. There’s barely a reference to online journalism, not enough attention given to some of the bigger issues in science writing today, such as genetics or global warming or-given the current state of world affairs-military research. Some of authors have changed positions since the book appeared. For instance, I wrote a chapter on investigative science writing, which was one of my primary jobs back then, as a science writer at The Sacramento Bee. These days I’m a freelancer and a writing instructor at the University of Wisconsin. I’d like to replace my chapter with one by a writer who’s still active in investigative reporting. (Both Mary and I will continue as editors of the second edition.)

As with the first edition, NASW is providing the seed money for this project. We’ve budgeted $15,000 this year. You’ll be happy to know that our investment in the first book was easily paid back through royalty returns. But we are continuing to seek outside funding as well, so that we may pay our writers a decent fee for their work. (Royalties will once again go to NASW.) We have approached several foundations. They’ve been encouraging, and I hope in the next letter to be able to tell you more about this project as well as the others. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Meanwhile-stay tuned! This is shaping up as an adventurous and ambitious year for the National Association of Science Writers.

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Deborah Blum is a freelance writer and professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin. She can be reached at dblum@wisc.edu.