✍️Science Writing News Roundup #19 (November 27, 2020)
How to effectively talk about Covid-19 when we all feel terrible + Tips for scientists talking with reporters + Storytelling workshop + A new peer-mentoring network for journalists
🏄 Tips
Staying Safe While Covering the Coronavirus: Lessons from the Latin American Experience. Zuliana Lainez, senior vice president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), points out that the biggest collective lesson that journalists have learned in the past seven months is to stick together. “We need to let go of that history of individualism: ‘I compete with you to get to the story.’” That’s what journalists all over the region have started to do, by sharing safety tips, sources and information to aid their reporting, and even safety kits. (Read the article in Spanish)
Melissa Stewart, an award-winning author of more than 180 science books for children and editor of the anthology Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing, talks about writing for kids in this podcast episode of Chalk and Ink, with Kate Narita.
In the latest episode of the Conversations with Data podcast, science journalist and author Betsy Mason talks about how journalists can effectively use maps to help visualize stories. She also explains how bad design, geographical quirks and perceptual illusions can confuse audiences.
12 writing tips to make COVID-19 coverage comprehensible. As the pandemic reaches record levels, Roy Peter Clark shares 12 writing tips to effectively explain what this all means, including 1) You may wind up with thousands of readers, but begin in your head with one, 2) Create the illusion of conversation, 3) Only quote people who can make things clearer than you can, and 4) Reveal how the reader can use the information.
⛷️ Opportunities
With support from the Science Literacy Foundation, The Open Notebook will launch a peer-mentoring network to connect experienced science journalists with non-specialist reporters and editors to strengthen science journalism at local and non-specialist outlets.
Climate Tracker is offering a paid 3-month mentorship program to 12 young journalists from around the world. Apply by December 1, 2020!
Earth Journalism Network relaunched their Biodiversity Media Initiative this year, and they are looking for pitches from journalists around the world about untold threats to biodiversity as well as new, conservation-based solutions to the crisis.
The Science Writers and Communicators of Canada (SWCC) has opened their call for the 2020 SWCC Book Awards. There are two submission categories (general audience and children/youth) and each has a C$1,000 prize!
👏 News
Tinsley Davis, Executive Director of the National Association of Science Writers, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)!
The Best Australian Science Writing 2020, edited by Sara Phillips, is now launched. “The 33 stories that made it in are shining examples of really, really good science writing. They capture the humanity of science. They capture that messiness, the uncertainty, and they present it honestly,” she writes.
PressPad launched a crowdfunding campaign for their online support program, PressPad Remote, which offers free classes, Q&As with journalists, mentoring sessions on Zoom, and CV and pitch clinics for aspiring journalists!
🧐 Videos
Preprints and peer review in a pandemic. For the first time, journalists are reporting on preprints, putting them center stage before they’ve undergone traditional peer review. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has invited leading experts — a science journalist, a journal editor, and the co-founder of a preprint server — to discuss the risks and rewards of scientific publishing in this urgent and fast-paced environment.
Disrupting disinformation: A skill set for journalists. This webinar will walk you through the most common types of disinformation we find online, how to spot them and provide some tools and tips on how to slow its spread.
Conversations in science communication: news, journalism, and a global pandemic. This event focused on lessons learned from news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, how it has been reported, and updates on transmissions, vaccine development, and other topics.
Science in the Newsroom Global Summit 2020. What awaits us in 2021 and what lessons can we draw from COVID-19 coverage? You can watch the videos on YouTube and download the speakers' slides here.
Scientists: Learn to communicate your expertise to journalists and other audiences in this presentation facilitated by Meredith Drosback from SciLine, a program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science connecting US journalists to scientific experts for print, broadcast, and digital stories about science-related issues.
National Undergraduate Conference on Scientific Journalism (NUCSJ). Check out the playlist on YouTube; the conference brought together 500 students from 34 countries, and science writers such as Deborah Blum, Carl Zimmer, Apoorva Mandavilli, Betsy Ladyzhets, and Amy Ellis Nutt.
Melissa Manlove presents the current market for nonfiction writing for kids with ideas on how your work can capitalize on the exploding interest in informational books. (If you scroll down the page, you will see the video, which will be taken down on December 17, 2020.)
Kenna Castleberry interviewed Heidi Olinger, author of a popular children's book, Leonardo's Science Workshop, with interactive and fun STEAM activities for children.
🗓️ Events
Big Pharma & COVID-19 Vaccines: A Virtual Conversation with Investigative Journalist Gerald Posner (Science Writers in New York, December 1, 2020)
Media Briefing, COVID-19 Vaccines: Regulation, Allocation, & Hesitancy (SciLine, December 3, 2020)
Life sciences in a post-truth world – A COVID-19 case study (December 3, 2020)
Decolonizing Science Writing (San Diego Science Writers Association, December 3, 2020)
Introductory Storytelling Workshop: Learn both the science behind storytelling as well as how to integrate science into your stories (The Story Collider, December 7, 2020)
Online SciComm Coworking Session (December 10, 2020)
⏰ Career opportunities
Science Communications Officer, The Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA
Locum Associate or Senior News & Views Editor (Biology), Nature, London, UK
Science Reporter, Newsweek, London, UK
Script Editor: SciShow, Complexly, Remote, US-based
Communications Officer, Canadian Space Agency, Saint-Hubert (Québec)
Copy Editor, Climate Tracker, Remote
More jobs 👉Science Writing News Roundup #18
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Note: Top image by Oblik Studio