✍️Science Writing News Roundup #193
New Courses Aim to Train 1,000 Journalists on AI Reporting + How to Pre-bunk Climate Disinformation.
AAAS Announces 2024 Mass Media Fellows and New Project Director: Twenty early-career scientists will work in newsrooms and utilize their science communication expertise in brand new environments as 2024 Mass Media Fellows this summer.
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🎫Articles
Storytelling and science journalism’s future: As reports pile in about news outlets laying off their science reporters or shutting down altogether, it’s difficult to predict where science journalism is going, writes Chris Gorski.
My Fantastic Voyage at Quanta Magazine: Founding editor-in-chief Thomas Lin looks back at a decade of Quanta journalism and forward to what’s next for the magazine.
Interview: Sabrina Imbler Explores the Ethics of De-Extinction. Sabrina Imbler, a science journalist at Defector, discusses their reported opinion feature on the ethics of resurrecting extinct species—a part of the de-extinction conversation that traditional science-news stories often miss. They tell Jonathan Lambert about the craft of opinion-heavy writing, the value of rhetorical questions, and how to guide readers to their own conclusions on thorny issues.
Jessica Hamzelou, on the Importance of Covering Health Carefully: The Knight Science Journalism Fellow goes beyond the headline, "You can’t just write the big 'wow' stories...it’s your job as a journalist to dig a little bit deeper."
‘Huge blind spot’: The 19th’s Jessica Kutz on covering the gender-climate connection. Jessica Kutz spends a lot of time explaining her beat to others. Kutz is the gender, climate, and sustainability reporter at The 19th, a nonprofit publication focused on gender. And to many people, she’s found, the link between gender and climate isn’t quickly apparent.
How to spot five of the fossil fuel industry’s biggest disinformation tactics: Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope have covered climate disinformation for a combined 20-plus years – here’s their guide on how to decode it.
More articles 👉Bonus content for monthly supporters.
🧭News
New Courses Aim to Train 1,000 Journalists on AI Reporting: By scaling AI literacy and reporting across the media, The Pulitzer Center hopes to help create a virtuous cycle where more journalists are equipped to ask the hard questions that benefit the communities they serve: Where and how is AI being used? Where is it working or breaking? Who is being harmed, and who stands to profit? How can our audiences make sense of what it all means for them?
Oxford Climate Journalism Network secures funding to continue operations into 2024: Laudes Foundation and ECF will fund the third year of the project, which has hosted 400 journalists and 44 newsroom leaders in its first two years.
If you’ve experienced a journalism layoff or buyout in the past year, an ongoing survey needs your input! The Institute for Independent Journalists Foundation is conducting a census of journalists who were laid off and bought out recently. The survey should take 5-7 minutes.
🪪Opportunities
The 2024 EurekAlert! Travel Awards are open for applications! Applicants from the Balkans and Eastern Europe must have no more than five (5) years of professional science journalism experience in order to be eligible for the fellowship. Winners will receive travel funding to attend the 2025 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.
More opportunities and calls for pitches 👉Bonus content for monthly supporters.
📱Videos
Press Briefing: How to Pre-bunk Climate Disinformation. Researchers studying climate disinformation agree: “Inoculation” is one of the most effective options for countering it, and the first step toward inoculation is “pre-bunking,” or warning audiences in advance. In this webinar, co-sponsored by Covering Climate Now and Climate Action Against Disinformation, panelists discuss ways journalists can get ahead of climate disinformation and “pre-bunk” it in a way that doesn’t amplify the disinfo or cause unnecessary alarm.
How to Cover Transition Minerals | Mongabay Webinars. Are you a journalist covering the global energy transition? Are you looking for guidance on how to examine the environmental, technological, and human rights issues of this topic? Mongabay's webinar dives into how to cover transition minerals, such as cobalt, and nickel: minerals used for technology like electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure.
Health Storytelling Author Q&A with Maryn McKenna and Christine Yu. The final event of the Spring 2024 Health Storytelling Author Q&A series by the Emory Center for the Study of Human Health: Author and Senior Fellow Maryn McKenna interviews Christine Yu about her book, "Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes".
🗺️Events
Ethics, Trust & The News: How journalists can build and support a culture of credibility (April 17, 2024)
More events 👉Bonus content for monthly supporters.
📰Jobs
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