Deborah Blum

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

by Deborah Blum

Whenever there is discussion about the direction that the National Association of Science Writers should be taking—and let’s face it, that’s a fairly regular event—in the end there’s always agreement on a couple of points: We are a diverse membership, but we are all science writers who share a common goal of illuminating research for the public.

We observe science, explain it, and fight to keep the flow of information open. (Witness our recent collaboration with the Society of Environmental Journalists in prodding the Office of Management and Budget for more accessibility to government-funded research.) In that sense, whether a freelancer or staff writer, public information officer or investigative journalist, we belong to the same community.

The recognition that we are a community in our own right has driven many of our recent interactions with the long-time host of our national meeting, the American Association of Advancement of Science (AAAS). As I have detailed in recent president’s letters, NASW representatives have been meeting with AAAS administrators during the past year to assure access for our members to that organization’s annual meeting.

Following those discussions, AAAS has agreed to allow an NASW membership card to serve as press accreditation (with, of course, a photo ID). We regard that openness as a successful result for both groups. But equally important, the discussions served as a catalyst for some overdue thinking on the shape and direction of our organization.

For example, can we build a community of diverse members by mixing our national meeting with the annual meeting of a scientific organization? And can we truly call ourselves an independent organization of science writers if we remain dependent on AAAS for the timing, location, and schedule of our national meeting?
Comparable groups, such as the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) or the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), hold independent meetings. Their members speak of the strong sense of community and networking that is built by such a gathering. This is reflected in the fact that a large percentage of SEJ members attend its national meeting, allowing for a better coalition and a wider dissemination of information.

The NASW board wishes to move toward a similar model of independence and community. Still, we do not want to lose the advantages of combining our professional training workshops with scientific sessions that provide news to be covered and stories to be told. Fortunately, NASW has a unique opportunity to achieve both, and here is what the board proposes:

At the moment, NASW sponsors two annual training workshops: a larger one, held in February in conjunction with the AAAS annual meeting (at a time and place determined by that association), and a mini-workshop prior to the CASW New Horizons in Science meeting, held this year in early November.
CASW Executive Director Ben Patrusky, who has a gift for recognizing future hot and important directions in science, has long organized the CASW meeting with the goal of keeping science writers ahead of the curve.

Ben recently decided to step down as New Horizons meeting organizer while remaining at the helm of CASW. The new meeting organizer is our own former NASW president Paul Raeburn, a freelance science writer who recently left a senior position at BusinessWeek. I have now met several times with the CASW board and Paul. We all agree that this change provides an outstanding opportunity to create a new kind of science writers’ conference that would update both NASW’s and CASW’s programs, combining them into one meeting that balances news programs and professional training.

The timing is also good because CASW has some excellent and accessible locations lined up in the next few years, including Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, and Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. For those wondering, NASW will pay its own way at these venues and will not engage in fund-raising.

The proposal under discussion by the NASW board is not to abandon the AAAS meeting, but to switch the location of the two NASW meetings. In other words, we will still conduct a national training workshop in conjunction with the AAAS meeting, but it will be smaller in size and more intelligently focused to that science meeting as a training tool. To that end, we would continue the student-mentoring program and perhaps work with the AAAS Section Y (which looks at public communication of science) in developing presentations.

Our national conference, including plenary, workshops, networking lunch, etc., would take place in conjunction with CASW New Horizons. We would, for example, give the Science-in-Society awards at the same event as the CASW Victor Cohn award for career achievement in medical reporting is presented. As you see, what I’m describing is a real science writers’ meeting with NASW offering excellent professional development workshops while Paul Raeburn and his staff put together a national-caliber, story-producing meeting on scientific events and research.

In the short term, this means NASW will hold its February 2005 national conference in Washington, DC, in a location separate from AAAS—the Cafritz Center, at George Washington University. That meeting will run for the two days (including field trips) preceding the AAAS annual meeting and will be capped with a reception and awards ceremony at the National Academy of Sciences.

Fall 2005 is when we will begin to make the shift by expanding our program somewhat at the CASW meeting in Pittsburgh.

The bigger change would occur in 2006, allowing both organizations time to work on crafting that groundbreaking first national meeting.

In the meantime, we are, as promised, conducting another advisory survey on our national conference plans. The board wants to hear from you on how to improve the NASW national conference as it moves toward this exciting future. A condensed version of this president’s letter is being sent out on NASW-announce with links to the questionnaire on the NASW Web site.

The NASW board looks forward to hearing from you. We’ve already received a lot of support for the proposed changes—both at the general membership meeting in Seattle—and via online correspondence. If you have a particular concept you’d like to see addressed or an idea to improve the meeting, this is your moment. I will report back in the next newsletter on the results of the survey and on any other developments. So, as they say, stay tuned!

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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.