NEW HORIZONS BRIEFINGS: 40 YEARS OF BACKGROUND AND PERSPECTIVE IN SCIENCE

by Lynne Friedmann

A program designed to keep journalists and science writers apprised of cutting-edge research and technology recently observed its 40th anniversary.

The New Horizons in Science Briefing, held annually since 1963, has given participants a “heads up” by providing the background and perspectives necessary to understand innovative research and discoveries months or even years before they make headlines. For example, monoclonal antibodies and natural opiate receptors were presented at New Horizons well in advance of the time the full impact of their practical benefits had been realized and widely reported.

Sponsored by the Council for Advancement of Science Writing (CASW), New Horizons was the brainchild of CASW founders Earl Ubell and the late Victor Cohn. The late 1950s and early 1960s heralded an explosion of science and technology news in areas such as rocket engineering, space travel, nuclear physics, DNA, and the polio vaccine.

“Few of us had backgrounds in those areas, yet everybody was suddenly getting hit to churn out stories in two or three hours,” said CASW President Jerry Bishop, a retired Wall Street Journal science reporter.

Ubell’s and Cohn’s idea was to bring a small group of reporters together with scientists from a variety of disciplines and, over several days of seminars and socializing, explore developments in science, medicine, and technology that one day were likely to make news.

The first New Horizons Briefing was funded by NSF and hosted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Boston. It was by invitation only and limited to 25 reporters. To keep people from rushing in and out of the seminars, the rule was no writing until the end of the meeting. That restriction was lifted a few years later when reporters complained editors wouldn’t send them to a four- or five-day meeting if they weren’t filing stories. The invitation-only requirement was also later dropped.

In the beginning, program planning was rotated among CASW members, but many found they lacked the time and temperament to put together the kind of program they would want to attend.

“I got stuck with it one year, but that turned out to be a failure,” said Bishop. “If you’re a reporter, the speakers you’re going to pick you’ve already written about. And if you found something exciting, you wanted to keep it to yourself.”

That changed in 1975, when Ben Patrusky was asked to take on program planning on a regular basis. Patrusky had previously launched a successful Science Writer’s Forum for the American Heart Association. It was an experience that served him well with New Horizons.

“It turned out to be one of the best decisions we made,” said Bishop. “If we hadn’t hired Ben, I’m sure the program would have died years ago.”

New Horizons is generally hosted by a major research university. Among past sponsors are Harvard, Rockefeller, Duke, Ohio State, Stanford, University of California, Penn State, Arizona State University, and The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Financial support comes from the host institutions, corporations, and foundations.

Because CASW accepts bids from well-established research institutions it’s not surprising to find researchers from the host institution on the program. But hosting New Horizons does not mean a monopoly of the speaker lineup.

“There’s no quid pro quo,” Patrusky said. “It takes months of phone calls, scouting, and interviews to put a program together. I want to make sure reporters come away with sources they can trust and can use in the future.”

Patrusky seeks out scientists whose recent work is both groundbreaking and potentially newsworthy.

“My job is to stay ahead of the curve, to find the subject that may not have gotten the attention it deserves,” he said. “I have to work hard to surprise people. There’s no point in telling them what they already know.”

Joan Wilentz, a Maryland-based medical writer, has been attending New Horizons, off and on, since the 1960s. A philosophy and mathematics major in college, Wilentz looks upon the meeting as an opportunity for continuing education.

“I might never write about cosmology or high technology, but I always enjoyed hearing about them,” she said. “That’s part of being a science writer. There’s always something you can learn. It’s why I keep going.”

Mary Beckman, a freelance writer from Idaho Falls, Idaho gives the New Horizons format high marks for the access to speakers it affords and the opportunity for newcomers to interact with veteran journalists. Beckman attended the 2002 New Horizons Briefing at the University of Washington in St. Louis as a CASW Travel Fellow.

“I applied because I’d heard good things about the meeting,” she said. “I learned a lot about topics that I wouldn’t necessarily been exposed to. It was wonderful to just sit back and take it all in.”

The CASW Travel Fellowships allow freelance writers and reporters from small newspapers and media outlets to experience New Horizons. The program has been in existence for 17 years and, to date, more than 100 fellowships have been awarded. In recent years, the travel fellowships have been supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, which also is a major underwriter of New Horizons.

“Supporting New Horizons fits nicely with our mission,” said Carr Agyapong, senior programs and communications officer of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, an independent private foundation dedicated to advancing the medical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities.
Burroughs Wellcome supports many areas of research that are underfunded and, therefore, are not as well known.

“A program like New Horizons makes this kind of information available to the media who, in turn, can do a better job informing the public,” she said.

The interaction between journalists and scientists is also beneficial to the sponsoring campus. Virginia Tech is among a handful of institutions to host New Horizons twice.

“In 1983, we did it to increase exposure,” said Lynn Nystrom, director of news and external relations, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech. “In 1997, we did it because we knew the benefits of having done it before.”

The first time around, Nystrom’s goals were to build relationships with reporters by making them aware of the impressive strides Virginia Tech had made in its research program and to simply get writers out to the Blacksburg, Virginia campus.

“It’s really not Timbuktu,” she said.

Patrusky has long championed the inclusion of PIOs at New Horizons.

“A lot more science journalism these days is being reported out of journals, not conferences,” he said. “In many cases, the PIOs are the ones calling attention to what is important. As common suppliers of science news, they need to be as informed as anyone else.”

A side benefit of having PIOs attend New Horizons is they often want to bring the program to their own institutions.

Tony Fitzpatrick, senior science editor at Washington University in St. Louis, attended his first New Horizons meeting in 1988. Seeing how it connected the writers to the “sense of place” of an institution, he immediately started talking to his administration about bringing the program to Washington University.

“I guess I was so positive about it that I didn’t have to do a lot of convincing,” he said.

Washington University hosted New Horizons in 1993 and 2002. What particularly impressed Fitzpatrick about working with Patrusky was the manner in which he conducted campus visits scouting for program speakers. These were five days straight of back-to-back meetings with few breaks in between.

“It’s wonderful and exhausting to watch Ben in action,” Fitzpatrick said. “Anyone who accompanies him can learn a lot about journalism just by watching how he works and what kind of questions he asks.”

While institutions hope they will be mentioned in stories coming out of New Horizons, Patrusky stresses the meeting’s major purpose is to provide reporters with a sense of context and assist in longer-term editorial planning.

“I’ve never been preoccupied with generating stories out of the meeting,” he said. “People are free to file when and if they please. But ultimately the stories are told.”

The 41st New Horizons Briefing will be hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, and will take place Oct. 26-29, 2003.

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Lynne Friedmann is editor of ScienceWriters.