✍️Science Writing News Roundup #15 (November 4, 2020)

Tips for writing science explainers + The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020 is out! + A successful AAAS Mass Media Fellowship application + Science Stories with Apoorva Mandavilli

🌼 Tips

• “What I Had on my (Successful) AAAS Mass Media Fellowship Application,” by Dr. Anna Funk. Are you applying for the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship this year? If you're a science grad student in the US interested in science writing, this is for you!

• How can you write high-quality science explainers? Jesse Harris examined what makes a good scientific explainer article, focusing on “Charting a Coronavirus Infection” by Dr. Katherine Wu and Jonathan Corum, published in the New York Times.

• Meet Samantha Jones, a science writer, podcaster, and YouTuber with the American Chemical Society (ACS). “As a science writer, it's important to be able to take constructive criticism in stride. You will not always agree with everyone who edits your work. Learning when to let go is important (and takes a LOT of practice),” she said in an interview for the Job Talk Blog.

👓 Videos

• 2020 Amanpour Lecture with Ed Yong. In this talk, science writer Ed Yong shares nine tips (starting at 20:12) for reporting on COVID-19, including: “It’s not just a science story,” “Science is not a procession of facts,” “For the pandemic, we should move away from single papers as the atomic unit of science coverage,” and more!

• Is science writing the solution? A panel discussion hosted by Professor Alice Roberts, followed by the announcement of the winner of the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.

• Science Stories with New York Times Journalist Apoorva Mandavilli. Apoorva discussed how she tells stories involving complex scientific concepts so that they resonate with all readers, her coverage of COVID-19 for The New York Times, her work at Spectrum and The Atlantic, and her efforts to build diversity in science journalism!

• “Science journalism during the pandemic: How do you keep up with the facts and the fears” with science journalist Wendy Zukerman. How do you report the science in a satisfying way, when the answers aren't satisfying? How do you balance fear with facts? Watch the video to find out.

• Phallus Fallacies and Whale Snot: Writing About Weird Biology for More than Just Laughs. A Kavli conversation on science communication with Emily Willingham, Nick Caruso and Mara Grunbaum.

📂 Resources

• The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020 is out! “It’s full of beautiful and fascinating stories about space, forests, neuroscience, AI, dinosaurs, glaciers, and so much more. It’s also full of love, for humans and our world,” says Jaime Green, editor of the book.

• NCTJ launches Journalism Skills Academy: The online learning platform offers a series of free short courses on fact-checking and verification, an introduction to journalism, tips on pitching for freelance work, interviewing techniques, and more!

• A power list of the LatinX scientists who are changing the world: Meet scientists and STEM professionals of marginalized identities who are shaping policy and research worldwide.

• Get found in Google: You’ve got your article, blog, or website ready to post. But will anyone see it after you publish? This course will teach you how to use search engine data to expand the reach of your online science communication.

• Five writing tools for compelling environmental communication. Gavin Lamb found some useful tools and guides: “How to Talk About the Environment So that People Will Listen,” “The Common Cause Handbook,” and more.

🧐 Ideas

• This episode of Nature Podcast tries to get to the bottom of how journalists, communicators and policymakers influence how science is perceived. It features Deborah Blum, book author, science journalist, publisher of Undark, and director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT.

• “All science writers operate at the intersection of scientific inquiry and the written word, but Jyoti Madhusoodanan was literally born there.” R. M. Davis wrote about Jyoti's journey to becoming a journalist and Knight Science Journalism Project Fellow. For her, journalism isn’t just about reporting on what’s new; it’s also about questioning deep-rooted assumptions and learning to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

• Women have been marginalized in COVID-19 media coverage: a study by King’s College London found that 37% of quotations in health-related coverage were attributable to women, falling to 27% in business articles, and 24% in science and politics articles.

• Telling Science Stories — reporting, crafting and editing for journalists and scientists. “This book is a good addition to the existing literature on working aids and techniques for telling stories, for designing lectures and many very interesting suggestions for further teaching resources. But it is not the big, catchy and yet critically questioning story about telling stories in science,” according to Holger Wormer.

• Meet Paul Adepoju, a scientist-turned-journalist who believes very few journalists work together with scientists, which contributes to inaccurate reporting. He’s written for The Lancet, Quartz, The BMJ, CNN, Nature Medicine and other news outlets:

🚋 Opportunities

• Learn about reporting on global development in science communication with this new course, available online and open for applications at Cambridge University. You’ll gain knowledge of fundamental concepts in science journalism and special considerations when reporting on international development.

• The Fund for Investigative Journalism is offering Diversity Grants of up to $10,000 for investigative stories on any topic (grants are for U.S.-based freelance reporters or stories with strong U.S. angles)

• Medium publications that accept submissions from freelance writers: Future Human is a new publication from Medium shining a spotlight on the bold, imaginative ways people are using science to understand, navigate, and mitigate the threats we’re facing now, in hopes that things will be better tomorrow.

• Last chance to enter the Best of the Northwest Science Writing Awards, with $300 cash prizes for the best science/tech journalism and institutional writing by NSWA members.

🍹 News

• Congratulations to the winner of the 2020 Royal Society Science Book Prize, Dr. Camilla Pang, for her book Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us About Life, Love and Relationships! Read more on The Guardian and Science Focus.

• American Institute of Physics announces 2020 Science Communication Award Winners:

  • Book winner: “The Age of Living Machines” by Susan Hockfield

  • Articles winner: “The Hidden Heroines of Chaos,” by Joshua Sokol

  • Writing for Children winner: “Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet” by Curtis Manley

  • Broadcast and New Media winner: “Black Hole Hunters” by Catalyst

• Twelve journalists have been awarded fellowships in the Logan Science Journalism Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. Congratulations to the 2021 Fellows!

• AAAS and Subaru announce the longlist for the 2021 Hands-On Science Book Award. The Prize celebrates outstanding science writing and illustration for children and young adults:

🙌 Events

• Signals from the future: Emerging technologies in science journalism (November 4-5, 2020)

• Seminars for Underrepresented Science Writers👉Writing a Science Book (November 4, 2020), 👉The Science Journalism Panel (November 10, 2020), 👉The Science Writer Panel (November 17, 2020)

• AAAS Mass Media Fellowship Panel. Join alumni of the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship for a panel on their experiences being a fellow as well as applying to the program. (November 5, 2020)

• Falling Walls Circle Table: Science Communication in Crisis – Could we do Better? This virtual roundtable panel discussion will use COVID-19 as a context to illustrate common pitfalls in science communication and how they can potentially be overcome. (November 5, 2020)

• So you want to write a book: Ask a panel of authors all your questions about writing a book, from proposal to promotion. (November 8, 2020)

• Mental Health and COVID-19: A Virtual Conversation with Dr. Robert Klitzman (Science Writers in New York, November 9, 2020)

• Learn more about the Health and Science Reporting program at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York (November 10, 2020)

• State of Science Writing 2020: Has our profession prospered in 2020, or has it done badly like the broader economy? (November 10, 2020)

• Kavli Conversations on Science Communication. The Crisis Within the Crisis: Covering the CDC and Public Health During the Pandemic (November 12, 2020)

• Belgian SciComm Network Meeting: Sessions include “Perspectives on science journalism in Belgium”, and “Science in the press: Lessons from COVID” (November 17, 2020)

• Science in the Newsroom Global Summit 2020 (November 23-24, 2020)

🧭 Career opportunities

Has this newsletter made a positive impact on your career? I'd love to hear from you.

• Senior Scientific Writer, The University of Chicago, IL

• The Conversation, Commissioning Editor - Science & Technology, London / Remote

• Fellowship - Reporter, The New York Times, NY

• Senior content lead, Biotext, Canberra, Australia

• Staff Writer, Science, WIRED, London, UK

• Science Journalism Internships, University of Wyoming Laramie, WY

• Project Coordinator and Science Writer, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Canada

• More jobs 👉Science Writing News Roundup #14

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