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
Video by Félix Reskala GUERNEVILLE, California—Many attendees of the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017 had never seen a redwood tree. So it was no surprise that spots quickly filled up for a 30 October field trip to the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve north of San Francisco. The day included a walking tour with... Read More
Text and graphics by Andjela Djuraskovic SAN FRANCISCO—Free software, data and some patience. According to Alberto Cairo, that is all you need to create your first visual representation of information. With research showing that images are more memorable than text-based information, data visualization allows writers to turn pages of complex statistical findings into attention-grabbing images.... 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 Andjela Djuraskovic SAN FRANCISCO—Robots, takeovers by artificial intelligence, and high-tech jobs of the future: Those were the expected topics from a panel of Silicon Valley speakers at a session called “The Future of Work.” But to the surprise of the audience, the experts wanted to talk politics. The panel convened on 26 October at... Read More
By Annie Roth SAN FRANCISCO—We all know climate change increases the severity of tropical storms, but what about Twitter storms? According to Solomon Hsiang, director of the Global Policy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, climate change is destabilizing both economies and emotions across the globe. During an eye-opening lecture titled “Economic Inequality, Violence,... Read More
By Jesús Antonio Pascual Álvarez SAN FRANCISCO—There is a simple truth in the news business: Audiences want to consume verified information from credible media, and journalists strive to gain that trust. But things are often not that simple, because there always seems to exist a third party intent on bending the message in favor of... Read More
