Turning Science into News

In this short article I’d like to introduce the philosophy and content of the workshop on science and environmental journalism, to be held at University of Tsukuba this summer.

I have been on the editorial staff of Science Magazine since 1991, most recently serving as news editor in our European office in Cambridge, U.K., from 2000 to 2004. From September 2004 until July 2005 I was on sabbatical as a Fulbright scholar, through the U.S. State Department, at Al Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. There I taught journalism students and worked with science faculty to help them sharpen their skills in disseminating knowledge to the public. On 1 July I returned to the staff of Science as Asia news editor, to be based in Bangkok.

In addition to teaching, during my 10 months in Central Asia I wrote articles on a variety of subjects. My main sphere of interest is nonproliferation. Some recent topics I’ve focused on are plutonium in the soil at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, the Soviet Union’s main atomic weapons testing range during the Cold War; the legacy of uranium mining in Kyrgyzstan; and the hunt for missing radioactive generators in Tajikistan.

My course at Kazakh National University was conducted as a workshop, a format used in the highly regarded Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from which I received an advanced degree in science journalism. Each class began with a brief lecture―from basics such as how to conduct an interview or how to structure a journalistic story, to more specific topics such as how the embargo system of scientific journals works. “Hands-on” activities following the lecture included critiques and discussions of student writing, analyses of published articles, and journalistic exercises. The underlying principle is that journalism is a craft, and the only way to acquire skill is through practice. I conducted a similar workshop during the 2003-2004 academic year at the University of Cambridge, U.K., where I served as Visiting Writer in Science at St. Edmund’s College.

A similar, abbreviated format will be used for the workshop in Tsukuba: Brief lectures on the topics mentioned above will be interspersed with journalistic exercises and analyses of published articles. I hope to meet you in August.