Student science writers from around the world have created a set of 52 stories from the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017, spanning most of the meeting’s sessions and creating a valuable reference archive for journalists in the U.S. and abroad. The reports, along with bios of the authors, are online at the WCSJ2017 Student... Read More
By Amelia Jaycen SAN FRANCISCO—Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel Prize–winning astrophysicist and cosmologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has spent a lot of his time ascertaining how quickly the universe is expanding. But he is also concerned with some down-to-earth issues, like the state of human interactions. As he watched public discussions unfold in the last... Read More
By Carolyn M. Wilke SAN FRANCISCO—Is fact-checking the future of journalism? That question, at once disturbing for our society and promising for the increased role science journalists might play in combating fake news, drove a panel discussion among four experts on 30 October at the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017. The panelists, all experienced... Read More
SAN FRANCISCO—Science podcasts are more popular than ever. Producing them takes time, technical savvy, and a deep passion to engage listeners with material that is both informative and fun. How does one start a science podcast and build a dedicated audience? Those topics drew an enthusiastic crowd on 27 October at the World Conference of... Read More
By Liz Kimbrough SAN FRANCISCO—When South African student journalist Sibusiso Biyela sat down to write about the launch of the MeerKAT telescope in both English and Zulu, he thought it would be simple. The English version rolled out smoothly. But when he began to translate into Zulu, his native language, he found he would have... Read More
By Kelsey Harper SAN FRANCISCO—“There’s no sitting on the sidelines today,” announces German science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt as conference attendees shuffle into the room with matching looks of vague confusion. He herds them to the front of the room, where two groups of chairs face each other. The seats are separated by an aisle 3.96... Read More
Curious to see some highlights from the first few hours of sessions here in San Francisco? You can check out the Twitter hashtag #WCSJStudents, where our global cohort of student travel fellows is covering the World Conference of Science Journalists live. Here are some selected tweets the students sent from sessions on Thursday afternoon and... Read More
By Ellen Rykers SAN FRANCISCO—The tip of bone sticking out of the dusty Patagonian earth was a tantalising hint: dinosaur fossil. Paleontologist Diego Pol and his team began to dig—unaware that they were about to unearth the largest dinosaur bone ever found. This giant bone was just one of a series of sensational South American... Read More
By Sergio Villagrán SAN FRANCISCO—Latin America is well represented at the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017. With 78 registrants from 12 countries, the tenth edition of the world’s most important event in science journalism has featured the largest Latin American gathering in the meeting’s history. But this good news also brings many shared challenges.... Read More
By Kimber Price SAN FRANCISCO—In any given field of biomedicine, researchers publish thousands of journal articles each year. How can a healthcare journalist keep up? She can’t. But given the most comprehensive databases and the most malleable search tools, any journalist can home in on the information most relevant to their needs. And for... Read More
By Félix Reskala SAN FRANCISCO—There is a problem in science: Scientists often can’t reproduce the results of their colleagues. More than 50% of researchers feel this poses a major problem for the field, according to a survey last year in Nature. To address what this issue means for science journalists, prominent editors and scientists convened... Read More
