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 Inés Gutierrez SAN FRANCISCO—For quite some time, the words “the future is now” have been chasing us. Our collective imagination envisions a tomorrow filled with holograms, interactive media and 3D images. But when we look around, we realize that day may not come soon. However, one thing has visibly changed: digital content is more... Read More
By Omnia Gohar SAN FRANCISCO—“Big data,” so central to modern physics and astronomy, offers the potential to revolutionize medicine as well. Vast archives of biomedical information could already include the data needed to diagnose and treat many diseases, said computational health scientist Atul Butte of the University of California, San Francisco, on 26 October at... Read More
By Michelle Morelos SAN FRANCISCO—Knowing an opponent’s movements can give players an advantage in the game. That saying is especially apt for science journalists who cover the public and media manipulations from giant food and beverage corporations. On 29 October at the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017, experts shared key ways to identify the... Read More
Text and photos by Inés Gutiérrez SAN FRANCISCO—When I woke up on the cloudy morning of 30 October, I thought to myself, “Today I get to look inside X, the secretive innovation lab.” It was field trip day at the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017, and a group of us headed south toward the... Read More
By Carolyn M. Wilke MOSS LANDING, California—Forget Mars. The next frontier in the search for undiscovered life forms may lie deep in the oceans of our own planet. Thousands of meters below the ocean’s surface, hulking underwater rovers probe the remote depths looking for mysterious creatures. “It really is like an alien landscape, but just... 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
Thank you for attending WCSJ2017! We’re excited to have welcomed 1,364 registered attendees—from more than 70 countries—to San Francisco for WCSJ2017.
