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 Alex Fox BERKELEY, California—Too often, the most pressing environmental issues faced by humankind fade away when the news cycle ends. Without breaking news to inject them back into coverage, these stories can dwindle even as their impacts intensify. But there are reliable ways for journalists to forge compelling stories at any time from ongoing... Read More
By Jia Naqvi SAN FRANCISCO—Eleven days. That is all it took for E. coli bacteria in a lab demonstration to evolve protections against an antibiotic dose 1,000 times more concentrated than previously needed to kill them. The well-publicized 2016 experiment (see video below) pointed to the problem of ever-growing antibiotic resistance, fed by increased antibiotic... 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
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
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 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
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.
