No prizes for kids books

It is the time of the year again for science writers to pile in with their entries for the Royal Society's awards for science books. The RS has just put out the Call for entries for this year's awards.

You have until 2 April 2009 to fill in the on-line entry form and to persuade your publisher to send them seven "non-returnable copies of each entry".

There is a prize of £10,000 for the winner while the authors of the short-listed books get £1000. Sadly, they haven't lined up a big sponsor, so there is no Junior Prize this year.

The press release says that, after winning last year, Mark Lynas's Six degrees: Our future on a hotter planet "saw sale figures more than double throughout the months following the award".

Science Journalism Growing Overseas

Way back in the mists of time, probably some time in the late 1970s, New Scientist sent two people from to the AAAS in Denver, the magazine's forst foray into alien territory. When they got there, they were surprised to find another two or three locals, folks from the BBC's always excellent radio science unit. That was the sum total of the Brit contingent.

How things have changed. Other reports suggest that the UK contingent all but ounumbered the locals.

Now we have Cristine (Cris) Russell, who is probably too young to have been in Denver, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review about the increasing foreign presence at the AAAS, Science Journalism Growing Overseas.

"The number of science reporters and journalists-in-training from far-flung parts of the world—the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America, as well as Canada, the U.K., Germany, Sweden and other parts of Europe—has expanded at AAAS. At the same time, the presence of working American science reporters from major newspapers and magazines has declined over time, their ranks often replaced by a diverse group of freelancers and digital journalists who write, blog, and Twitter for a variety of startup and established news and information Web sites."

The comments on this piece suggest that the golden era is over. "I think that science journalism is a vanishing specialty in Germany as well as in the United States," says one observer.

Another group present in reasonable numvers in Denver was the team from CBC's Quirks and Quark. At the Chicago bash this fine rival to the BBC – I have memory of an embarrassingly late bar bill drinking with David Suzuki in Denver – was, it seems, "not represented by a staffer".

Paul Raeburn tries to bring things down to earth with the view that the AAAS was "rarely a showcase for breaking news". Sorry Paul, but that has always been the case, even when the US science writing corps turned up in large numbers.

The science pack inthe USA used to be able to sell rewarmed science to its editors. Are you telling us that these editors are now much more in tune with what is happening in science?

That really would be good news.

Unsporting gesture at the FT

Remember the fuss about decisions to abandon specialist science reporting in places like CNN? An underlying theme of the discussion was that science journalism is somehow special. True, maybe, if you are a science writer, but business journalism, law journalism and sports journalism, for example, can all lay claim to needing special expertise and dedicated teams.

It is a shame when any of specialist teams gets the chop. But showing that science is not that special, an item in Cision, Media bulletin, tells us that the piece tells us that the Financial Times has "announced plans to cease sports coverage as of 14th February following ongoing cutbacks at the newspaper".

There is also a report on this development on the Guardian's web site. This tells us that the latest cuts are just the latest of many on the FT.

The good news has to be that science reporting is more important to the FT than sports coverage. If CNN were to chop its sports team, that really would signal the end of civilisation as they know it.

Can ABSW members support science reporters in developing countries?

Thanks to Naima Reza for alerting ABSW-L to this item by David Dickson Learning by doing: Experiences of writing for SciDev.Net.

The ever resourceful service relies heavily on "reports commissioned from, or sent to us by, science journalists across the developing world". So SciDev.Net decided to survey its freelance contributors.

The 62 journalists who responded was, David admits, "neither particularly comprehensive nor scientific". Anecdotal the survey may be, but it has some interesting results. One observation is that "almost 70 per cent of survey respondents said that writing for SciDev.Net, as well as the editorial feedback we give, has improved their written English skills". Other findings include:

• "39 per cent of the respondents said that persuading government sources to comment on news stories was often difficult"
  
• "half of the respondents sometimes had difficulty persuading press officers to help them access information"
  
• "more than two-thirds said that scientists were sometimes unwilling to be interviewed".
  

Many of these observations will come as little surprise to ABSW members – would we have produced very different answers to the same questions? But it is well worth reading the piece for more details.

The point of putting something here is to pick up on Naima's reason for alerting ABSW-L. Can we do anything to help the people who write for SciDev.Net?

As David writes "the survey confirmed that many science journalists in the developing world feel isolated in their work, and would welcome greater contact with professional colleagues in other countries". How can we make that happen? Perhaps David can come up with some thoughts.

CERN's head of communications on the media flap

James Gillies, the poor soul who had to put up with Andrew Marr and a media circus on the day the world did not end, offers his account on what happened at at the LHC in an interview with Matthew Chalmers on physicsworld.com, CERN: the view from inside. Among other things, James puts paid to the rumour that it was all set up around Marr's holiday plans, but he does admit that "The BBC did ask if we could put the date back if Andrew couldn’t make it, and we said “no”."
What about that "black hole" scare? "Ultimately it helped us by generating interest, but it also worried an awful lot of people and that makes me somewhat angry. People were phoning us up genuinely worried about the end of the world and demanding to know who CERN is accountable to."
The interview is an interesting account of what went on at CERN, especially the aftermath, when the thing quickly experienced and expensive breakdown. There are tales of (temporarily) suppressed pictures, rewritten notebooks and, reading between the lines, one or two people who thought they could manage the news for their own purposes.
The good news, if you are that way inclined, is that there will be a second chance to experience the excitement, when they restart the LHC. There will, though, be a somewhat smaller circus.
This time we won't have to go there to see what is happening. "The whole process will be webcast. CERN was unwilling to invest in bandwidth before the 10th so the webcast fell over very early in the morning, but we’ve since had companies offering us bandwidth in exchange for having their logo displayed."
Perhaps they should seek funds from those other creators of black holes, the world's banks. Then again, they probably don't have that much spare cash lying around these days.

Manager - EMBO Publications

• Grade: 9, 10 or 11 depending on experience and qualifications
• EMBL site: EMBO Heidelberg
• Commencing date: As soon as possible, after closing date

Job description: EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization, publishes three high profile journals – The EMBO Journal, EMBO Reports and Molecular Systems Biology. The launch of a fourth journal – EMBO Molecular Medicine – is planned for early 2009. The position of Manager of Publications will fall vacant in the course of 2009. The successful applicant will take over the primary responsibility for the successful operation of all four journals. The role of the publications manager encompasses the overall strategic, scientific and financial management of all four EMBO publications and their editorial offices. EMBO publication policy will be developed together with the EMBO Director, the publications staff, the publishers of the journals, the EMBO publications committee and EMBO Council. Day-to-day responsibilities include liaison with the Senior or Executive academic editors of the journals, the Chair of the EMBO Publications committee, organisation of meetings of this committee and of the advisory editorial boards of the journals including preparation of documentation for and reports of the meetings of these bodies.

Qualifications and experience: The ideal candidate will have proven research track record, a thorough knowledge of molecular biology and broad interests in diverse areas of the life sciences. He/she should have extensive editorial experience and be familiar with trends in modern scientific publishing. A key requirement for the position is the ability to think critically about the wide range of strategic, scientific, financial and management issues required for the successful operation of high quality scientific journals. Fluent English is essential, as are good communication and organisational skills and the ability to provide leadership to the editorial teams.

Contract: An initial contract of 5 years will be offered to the successful candidate. This can be renewed, depending on circumstances at the time of review.

Closing date: 28 February 2009

Web page: http://www.embo.org

To apply, please email a cover letter, CV (in English) and contact information of three professional references quoting ref. no. W/08/096 in the subject line, to: application@embl.de
Personnel, EMBL, Postfach 10.2209, 69012 Heidelberg, Germany.

Fax: +49 6221 387555 E-mail: application@embl.de