✍️Science Writing News Roundup #7 (September 21, 2020)
Best Shortform Science Writing: January-June 2020 + #SciWriGrants applications are due September 30 + What is the value of a scientist-artist collaboration?
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🔔 Opportunities
Have a great idea for a project that would help science writers? The National Association of Science Writers is accepting applications for idea grants. This year they're prioritizing projects that directly address systemic racism and/or the COVID-19 pandemic. The deadline is September 30.
Nature’s news team is looking for a reporter for a January-July 2021 internship. It’s a paid, full-time writing position based in their Washington, DC office.
Fermilab, a particle physics and accelerator laboratory in the US, is looking for science writing interns.
Columbia's Zuckerman Institute is looking for a Science Communication Manager.
The Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK is looking for a Communications Officer.
🎺 Ideas
How to improve as a science writer: four writers share some tips with Rob Brooks. “The best way to improve as a writer is to write more, but learn from your previous efforts, which means really taking on board what editors do to, and say about, your work. It also helps to read lots of writing that you like, work out what you like about it, and strive towards that,” says Bianca Nogrady, founding president of the Science Journalists Association of Australia, in an article for The Writing Cooperative.
The perfect pitch. Anna Funk, Associate Editor at Discover Magazine, reads a lot of pitches. She receives pitches that don’t have nearly enough information, and pitches that have way too much information. What’s the right amount of information? To figure it out, she sat down and wrote a pitch based on one of her favorite stories. Here’s what she came up with.
Science writers get to work on a LOT of cool projects. Learn how Samantha Jones built her career as a writer and show host for the American Chemical Society on this week’s Once a Scientist Podcast episode.
When bad reporting happens to good science. Johanna L. Miller wrote about a physics study three years ago, and today she is still surprised by the sheer amount of news coverage it garnered and for how astonishingly inaccurate that coverage was.
Will AI bots ever replace science journalists? Not likely, according to a panel on AI journalism at the European Conference of Science Journalism (ECSJ), which took place on September 1st in Trieste, Italy.
Jasmine Wallace: Mastering the art and science of peer review. Jonathan Schultz, Editor-in-Chief of Science Editor, spoke with Jasmine Wallace, a peer review manager at the American Society for Microbiology, about the opportunities ahead for peer review and publishing.
🩺 Covid-19
Learn about the science of the pandemic with this new MIT course available to the public for free.
Elemental compiled a list of people who have helped us make sense of the pandemic. These 50 experts regularly share science-backed insights and/or highlight the forces that influence the virus's impact.
The Federation of American Scientists, with the help of other organizations, launched “Ask a Scientist” to bring together hundreds of scientists to answer questions related to Covid-19. This is the story of that project.
The science on Covid-19 gives us evidence, not instruction. That is why it is so hard for schools trying to find the "right" route through the Covid-19 pandemic, explains science writer Dr. Kat Arney.
🗺 Climate change
SciLine asked scientists for quotable comments on the most important science considerations voters should understand as they compare US candidates’ approaches to climate change. Here's how they answered.
When collecting data around climate change, personal stories of people who are experiencing the effects can be missed. Former journalist Julia Kumari Drapkin explains why she decided to set up a platform for anyone to share their observations: “When we understand our relationship with our changing environment, we understand how to plan for our future.”
🎬 Videos
Science communication, testing, and contact tracing, with Ed Yong, Science Journalist at The Atlantic. In this conversation with Krista Milich of Washington University in St. Louis, as part of The Pandemic: Science and Society course, Yong shared some of the techniques he uses to write science stories to the general public, and his thoughts on how to tackle misinformation. Yong also said he is working with The Open Notebook to create a page highlighting the diversity of career paths among science writers and how they started their careers.
Erica Evans and Amy Joi O’Donoghue, winners of the 2019 AAAS Kavli Awards in the Small Newspaper category, talk about their winning stories. “Science is all around us. You just have to be open to exploring what makes it relevant for readers,” says O’Donoghue.
Karen Kwon, Kevin Alicea-Torres, and Evelyn Valdez-Ward discuss their experiences as AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellows.
🥇 News
Best Shortform Science Writing: January-June 2020. The Best Shortform Science Writing project, created by Diana Crow, highlights outstanding science writing. This year, they received 636 nominations and narrowed them down to 76 pieces.
Congratulations to this year’s NASW’s Summer Writing Award winners: Brianna Barbu, Jaime Chambers, and Adithi Ramakrishnan. The NASW also announced Student Newsroom, a brand new section of their website devoted to showcasing the writing of their student members.
🎫 Events
How to work with artists to increase engagement with science. What is the value of a scientist-artist collaboration? How do I get started? Join the Alda-Kavli Learning Center webinar featuring Lifeology (September 24, 2020)
AAAS Kavli Webinar: Science Journalism During a Pandemic and Beyond, featuring Carl Zimmer, Maggie Koerth, Angela Saini, and Azeen Ghorayshi (September 24, 2020)
In his new book, The State of Science, Marc Zimmer shows where science is, where it is heading, and the scientists who are at the forefront of progress (September 21, 2020)
September virtual happy hour with the Science Writers in New York and D.C. Science Writer's Association (September 29, 2020)
"The politics of the pandemic" is part of COVID-19 Science & Coverage, a free series for media and the public hosted by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and the National Association of Science Writers (September 30, 2020)
UK Conference of Science Journalists (October 13-15, 2020)
ScienceWriters2020, a joint meeting of the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (October 19-23, 2020)
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