✍️Science Writing News Roundup #45 (May 25, 2021)

Covering climate and the environment + Finding diverse sources for your COVID-19 reporting + Science Journalism Summer School

What Ph.D.s can learn about talking with reporters: SciLine polled 500 PhDs, with the help of Arizona State University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Studies, and found that many are wary of talking to reporters. SciLine director and veteran science journalist Rick Weiss shares tips to help break down these walls.

📨 Resources

• Finding diverse sources for your COVID-19 reporting. News organizations continue to grapple with ways to include in their stories more COVID-19 experts from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Here are a few resources.

🐧 Videos

• Covering climate and the environment. Few science stories will command as much reader and viewer attention as climate change and the environment. Learn how to help readers understand the ways in which humanity plays a role not only in the problem, but also in the solution, and how your journalism can make a difference!

• HITS Colloquium: Alina Schadwinkel on science journalism in corona times. How can scientists and science journalists work together? And how can we improve science news reporting?

⛱️ Opportunities

• Climate change is a global issue, capable of amplifying existing inequalities. But, as the global temperature rises, not all climate stories are being told with equal representation, particularly in developing countries. Climate Tracker is looking for stories about climate impacts, solutions, policies and science from all over the world.

KSJ at MIT @KSJatMIT

Do you have an idea for a science journalism project but need funding? The Knight Science Journalism at MIT is offering nine month ($40k) and four-and-a-half month ($20k) remote project fellowships. Apply by June 6, 2021. More: ksj.mit.edu/fellowship/ksj…

Ian Tucker @tuckerian

ATTENTION FREELANCE SCIENCE JOURNALISTS! Please send me your pitches for features, 1700 words approx, which could run on the Observer’s Science & Technology pages. A not exhaustive list of genres of pieces… 1/4

Jacob Aron @jjaron

Freelance science journalists, I need you! Looking for 300-500 word news stories (generally original reporting on recent papers) to be filed next week. Pitch jacob.aron@newscientist.com, don't DM. Pitching guidelines here and I'm happy to answer questions

newscientist.comGuide for freelancers | New Scientist

Australian Museum Eureka Prizes @eurekaprizes

Entries to the Finkel Foundation Eureka Prize for Long-Form Science Journalism close this Friday 28 May, so there's still time to prepare a submission: australian.museum/get-involved/e…

British Council Nepal @npBritish

#Opportunity for #WomenReporters in #Nepal for five-week media workshops, mentoring & grant to develop skills on #ClimateChange reporting, with a specific focus on #gender. FAQs & applications➡️bit.ly/2TlejEV #RoadToCOP26 #COP26 #UKAid

🖼️ Interviews and articles

• ‘Don’t go with the pack’: Usha Lee McFarling, on forging a new beat during the pandemic. When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Usha Lee McFarling started writing for STAT five years ago, it meant leaving something behind. Long a reporter who covered topics like space, climate change, and earthquakes, she switched gears and began covering biomedical advances.

• David Quammen on traveling into the past to cover the pandemic. Of the 40 years he’s worked as a science journalist, Quammen has spent the last 20 working to understand zoonotic diseases. Recently, María Paula Rubiano A. talked with Quammen about the challenges he faced and strategies he used to report on the pandemic.

• Latria Graham rewrites the narrative on being Black in the outdoors. As an established freelance writer based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Graham covers a wide range of subjects, from sports to food to environmental justice. In doing so, she’s rewriting the stories of southern African Americans into the regional and national consciousness, and reclaiming her own rootedness in the American South.

• Climate journalism: bandwagon, zeitgeist or audience growth opportunity? When the interest in news about the coronavirus decreases, could climate become the next important topic for audience engagement? Journalism.co.uk emailed some of the leading legacy news organizations which are stepping up their coverage on climate change to find out.

• Interview with science writer Jennifer Welsh. In this episode of The Microbe moment, Jennifer talks about her processes and tools as an independent writer, and how working on different projects gives her the ability to learn from different disciplines.

nadja oertelt 💥 @nadjao

This is an amazing assessment of translated science news, stories and educational content at @scifri. What did we learn about the demand for content and our capacity to make it? By @emaculategirl + @laurenjyoung617 sciencefriday.com/articles/scien… #scicomm

sciencefriday.comUnpacking The Demand For Multilingual Science MediaLearn how Science Friday audiences responded to a science story offered in English and Spanish, with implications for science communication.

🛤️ Events

• The Golden Age of Science Video (May 25, 2021)

• Putting Your Skills to Work: Author and conservationist Kevin Van Tighem on crafting memorable prose that improves our ecological literacy (May 25, 2021)

• Science Writers and Communicators of Canada 2021 Virtual Conference (June 7-17, 2021)

• Science Writers' Boot Camp (Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, June 7, 2021)

• Transitioning to Writing for Podcast and Video (June 9, 2021)

• Science Journalism Summer School: A one-day event for people starting or returning to a science writing or journalism career (July 8, 2021)

🗺️ Jobs and internships

• Editorial Intern, Scientific American, US-based

• News intern - diversity programme, Nature, London, UK or remote

• Associate or Senior Editor (Materials Science & Engineering), Nature, London, New York, Berlin, or Shanghai

• Senior Editor + Writer, Atlas Obscura, Remote

• Writer/Editor (Part-time), Outsmarting Human Minds: A Project at Harvard University, US-based

• Associate or Senior News & Views Editor (Physics), Nature, London, Berlin or New York

• Sr Communications Specialist, NASA AMES Research Center Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA

• Senior Writer, Health, WIRED, Remote

• Staff Writer, Space, WIRED, Remote

• Senior Editor, Ideas, WIRED, Remote

• Health Editor, BuzzFeed, Remote

• Health Content Editor, Parkinson’s UK, Remote

• Reviews Editor, Popular Science, Austin, TX

• Science Reporter, NBC News Digital, US-based, Remote

• Assistant Editor, Popular Science (Technology), New York, NY

• More jobs 👉Science Writing News Roundup #44

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