I’m really pleased that the American Association for the Advancement of Science has focused on this critical (and dismaying) subject at its annual science and technology policy forum. I’m slightly less pleased that they’re taking away my PowerPoint (I may fall to the floor twitching during my panel from withdrawal), but perhaps I’ll manage to be entertaining even without the usual visual props. Anyway, here’s the panel lineup:
Moderator: Eli Kintisch, Reporter, Science
Cristine Russell, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and President, Council for the Advancement of Science Writing
Dan Vergano, Reporter, USA Today
Joann Rodgers, Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Chris Mooney, Contributing Editor, Science Progress; and co-author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (to be released July 2009)
My role is going to be to focus on the role of science in the new media, where, as some may already know, I’m kind of a self-loathing blogger. I love it, I’m addicted to it, I’ll probably never stop doing it; but at the same time, I nevertheless have come to wonder whether it’s an adequate replacement for the loss of science in the traditional media….
May 1st, 2009 at 9:35 am
Chris,
Have fun. flying without Power Point from time to time is a good thing – it sharpens your framing skills afterall. We, on the other hand, would love to see your power point.
We’ll await the update.
May 1st, 2009 at 9:46 am
I envy you. I wish so many times I could give a chalk talk or better still, work the stage like a stand-up comedian. I have done it before and I yearn to do it again. Have fun.
May 1st, 2009 at 10:24 am
It would have been nice if they allowed bloggers in to cover the session. But AAAS has a policy of excluding bloggers, at least, that’s what they told me. They also discriminate against online magazines, even if strictly journalistic enterprises, that are published by non-profits that also engage in advocacy (such as Science Progress, where you are a contributing editor). This is, of course, one solution to the decline of MSM: allow sources to dictate access. That can act as an effective barrier to entry . . . for a while. But in the long run, it will be no more effective than steel quotas.
May 1st, 2009 at 11:46 am
As long as the Friday Morning TV fare can devote time to hyping the should have been forgotten story of Lorena Bobbit’s surgery practice, we will have a problem getting serious science covered at all.
What I don’t see is blogging in general ever fulfilling the role that Chris is talking about. Most of what you see is just one blogger picking up a story from somewhere else, re-writing it to put their own spin on it and amplifying the story before it passes from our collective nan0-second attention span. Such a story was that of the mass suicide of 1500 farmers in one state of India… an event that never happened but showed up almost everywhere from Huffington Post to Indymedia all across the country… even on Free Republic. But no one did even a sniff test to see if the original story from a Belfast newspaper made sense.
There are standards of journalism that need to be practiced and which, for worse and not better, there are no means of enforcing in the blogosphere. While I am of an activist bent, there are very few blogs from which I trust the owners to get the facts write before they apply their own opinions, perceptions. This is one. Climate Progress is another.
This morning, I am pondering how Lou Grant would have dealt with the current crisis in journalism. Need I mention that the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting went to
Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of East Valley Tribune, Mesa, AZ and that Giblin had already been laid off when the Prize was announced.
May 4th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Wes,
I think that you will find many scientists in the blog-o-sphere are closer to your journalistic ideal than folks from other disciplines. We are, afterall, trained researchers, and thus when we pick up somthing from some one else, we have a tendency to try to go back to the original source.
But, thinking about the larger turn of journalism, I am saddened to report that our federal government may well be partly to blame. By allowing media consolidation, the FCC and others have crushed the ability of the hometown journalist to really report on things that matter to her constituents. That’s why the New York Times will very soon be determining if Boston has a hometown paper, and why Seattle lost a great independent voice when Chicago businessmen saw their profit base shrinking. I could go on.
Just like the Science Debate 2008 movement, I think the blog-o-sphere could od a really grand thing, and lead the cahrge for the sustanance of the print journalistic profession. Imagine th eimpact on the national debate (not to mention the FCC) of a full page add signed by dozens of Nobel lauretes demanding that newspapers not be shut down.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
[...] too lazy to have summarized my talk at AAAS from last Friday–but Cristine Russell, who was also on the panel, has written it up for CJR. [...]