ABSW South West at the King Bill

On 16 September, seven of the ABSW's finest minds gathered in a dark pub on King Street in Bristol. Thanks to new funding for regional meetings, drinks were at the expense of the Association. (And thanks to the excellent value offered by the King William, there is still enough in the kitty for another round).

Amid much talk of the recent World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) in London, there was discussion of the identity of the British Science Association and of forming links with Bristol's Festival of Ideas, as well as the next WCSJ in Egypt.

A third meeting is planned before the end of the year. Any members in the region who are not on the South West list can email Hayley Birch at hayleymbirch [a] manyfinewords.co.uk

Those who attended: Matin Durrani, Carolyn Allen, Liz Kalaugher, Julie Clayton, Jon Turney, James Dacey and Hayley Birch.

A call for less science journalism

How could science writing for the public possibly be better? John Rennie, "outgoing" Editor in Chief of Scientific American, must have know that we would raise eyebrows with his comment that one answer to the question might be "maybe there should just be less of it".

He expands on this observation in a Scientific American Podcast, on the "Future of Science Coverage," based on comments he made at the World Conference of Science Journalists in London recently. His line, as reported in the transcript of the podcast, is that "we could all do with a lot fewer of the “what causes/cures cancer this week” story".

Rennie then goes on to dismember the "model of following what defines science news as that 95 percent of the time it is “interesting paper that appears in prestigious journal this week.”" As he says, "we’re all smart enough to know that that has absolutely nothing to do with how science works. That has to do with how publishing works."

The main message from Rennie is that "we have a responsibility as editors to try to rethink what counts as science news".

Best of the World Conference of Science Journalists 2009

So the World Conference of Science Journalists is over, and what a conference it was. Around 950 science writers, journalists and communicators gathered over three days at London's Westminster Central Hall for debate, discussions, diatribes and, of course, plenty of drink.

With a delightfully packed schedule and the repressing heat of an unusually sunny London week, you'd be forgiven if bits of it passed you by in a bit of a haze.

Thankfully, on the Internet nothing goes unrecorded. So here's a compilation of blogs, tweets and resources by ABSW members to help you to catch up on, or just relive, those heady three days. (This is by no means a comprehensive list, so please feel free to point out further reports and resources in the comments).

A big thanks to Julie Clayton, Sally Robbins and Fiona Fox for organising the fantastic programme.

Twitter
One of the most engaging aspects of the conference was the way delegates embraced Twitter and the #wcsj hashtag as a means of communicating.

There were 2,526 tweets from 252 contributors over the course of the conference, with an average of 360 tweets per day. This allowed people to hold conversations simultaneously in the real-life sessions and on the web. And with many sessions on at the same time, it proved a great way for delegates to keep in touch with interesting points from the debates they couldn't attend -- not to mention the useful service provided for those journalists who were not able to attend the conference at all.

Ed Yong, the most prolific tweeter at WCSJ, has a good description of the value of Twitter at WCSJ on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

If you'd like to relive the whole thing, you can view a transcript of the entire #wcsj Twitter conversation on wthashtag.com (you can also adjust the transcript to just look at particular days only).

And as David Bradley has written, the conference was great for putting faces to the names of people one has met purely through email and Twitter. The digital age indeed.

Not Exactly Rocket Science
As well as live-tweeting from the conference, Ed Yong has written up three four in-depth accounts covering the New Media New Journalism session, the discussion with Nick Davies on Flat Earth News, the hard-to-forget Embargoes debate that was, for many, the highlight of the event, and what exactly science journalism is (cheerleader or watchdog?). These have prompted replies from scientist bloggers Mike the Mad Biologist on embargoes and another by Kim Hannula on Investigative Science Journalism).

Ed was of course also the winner of the ABSW Best Newcomer 2009 award, presented at the Gala reception in front of hundreds of science journalists, one Diplodocus and a statue of Charles Darwin.

Just a Theory
ABSW Executive Committee helper and Imperial SciCom student Jacob Aron was not only a volunteer at the conference, he was blogging the event too!
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

SciDev.Net
It was hard to miss SciDev.Net at WCSJ, with development a major strand and many of the delegates (myself included) current or ex-staff or freelancers. SciDev.Net's blog provided great coverage of the conference from the developing country point of view.

They also reported several news stories from the conference, including the success of Cairo in hosting the next WCSJ.

Nature
Nature's reporters were reporting from the conference on their In the Field blog.

A fishy beginning
What Climate coverage would David King like to see?
Fraud "endemic to medical publication"
Embargoes debate
Scrutinising big pharma
Swine Flu - don't believe the hype
Achieving global coverage for science – a workshop
London to Cairo

BBC Radio 4 Leading Edge
Geoff Watts, who took part in the Embargoes debate, had a brief audio package on the conference in his Leading Edge programme. You can listen again for the next few days.

Scientific American podcast
John Rennie, former editor of Scientific American, expands on his comments at WCSJ that what we need is less science journalism.

Financial Times Science blog
Clive Cookson's take on the WCSJ and the supposed 'crisis' in science journalism.

Columbia Journalism Review
Two excellent reports, one on the accusation that the National Science Foundation is 'underwriting' science coverage and other models from the 'New Media, New Journalism' session. The other is on the Future of Science Journalism, cherry-picking bits from the 'Blogs, Big Physics and Breaking News,' Science Editors and other sessions.

Lindau Nobel blog
Freelancer Matthew Chalmers writes on science journalism and blogging, following the Blogs, Big Physics and Breaking News session he took part in.

WCSJ News and the Naked Scientists
The official WCSJ news website, while not updated very often, does carry some reviews and short reports of sessions as well as the daily 10 minute podcasts presented by Meera Senthilingam of the Naked Scientists (I've heard longer podcasts of some of the sessions may soon available as well).

You may also have noticed the photographers floating around the place -- which explains this photo gallery of the event.

And for those who disappeared to the booze before the final speeches were over, here's the summary video shown at the end.



Update 5/7/09 22.50 Added Lindau Nobel, Mike the Mad Biologist and Kim Hannula links. Thanks to @BoraZ
Update 6/7/09 22.18 Added links to Columbia Journalism Review (thanks @Simon_Frantz), Scientific American podcast and session summaries on WCSJ news website (thanks @absw).
Update 7/7/09 09.47 Added extra post from Not Exactly Rocket Science.

A few questions on your professional situation

Martin Bauer, Head of the Methodology Institute and Director MSc Social and Public Communication, at the London School of Economics, is using the World Conference of Science Journalists as an opportunity to conduct a survey of science writers.

"We are undertaking a survey on the backgrounds, employment situation and daily practices of science journalists and the future of the profession. Whether you are taking part or not in the events, you are most welcome to tell us your opinion."

Lots of interesting questions in there "on your professional situation, your working practices, and the future of the profession".

Martin promises that "It will take you less than 10 minutes to answer these questions."

Count down to WCSJ 2009

The web site for the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists is up and running. So the official countdown can begin until the big day on 29 June next year.

Count the days, read the blog.

Chinese science communicators build a network

With the country graduating more new scientists every year than any other country, Chinese science has always been worth watching. It is especially so now that the country has become the world's manufacturing powerhouse. It won't be long before it makes even bigger waves on the technology front, which is why anyone who can read Chinese will profit from a visit to the China Science Reporting Network.

The network describes itself as "a public welfare network composed of Chinese science media workers, scientists willing to communicate science to the public, and public information officers of science institutes and innovation-based industries".

The CSRN's "manifesto" could easily describe the work of the ABSW. "It is aimed at improving and enriching scientific news reporting; advancing the abilities of scientific journalism; and promoting the exchange between science and health journalists and between journalists, science community and innovation-based industries."

It might be a good port of call for any science writer planning a visit to China. Then again, much like the ABSW, CSRN is, as it says, "a voluntary network without regular office and staff".

London's WCSJ web site

It was only while browsing the web site of the World Federation of Science Journalists that we discovered that someone has quietly assembled a site for the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists. It isn't just a marker in the sand either, there is some real detail there of the aspirations for the programme.

We'll have to add a link to the ABSW's various web sites. Then we can ask them to put all link back to use on the page about the ABSW.

Only two years to go before the big event. Start preparing now! Especially if you can sponsor the event in some way.

EUSJA blogs from Mebourne

A team of intrepid explorers from Europe have gone off to see what they can discover in Australia. Over on the EUSJA blog Hanns-J. "Hajo" Neubert promises to provide a blow by blow account of the World Conference of Science Journalists.