WeBlogScience

Ever wonder what its like to be around 950 science journalists? I found out last week when the World Conference of Science Journalists came to London.

Over three days journalists, writers, press officers and science communicators from all over the world gathered in Westminster Central Hall to discuss their craft, which is either evolving or dying, depending on who you asked.

It was a fantastically diverse programme, featuring a variety of speakers from all media and all corners. But several themes were apparent.
What is science journalism?

The inevitable first question is “What is science journalism and who does it?”. From the discussions at the conference, both in sessions and outside, it seems this is getting more blurred.

For one thing, what is journalism? I often think of investigative journalism as real reporting, but how much of that actually goes on in science, and how much actually can when the majority of the science news cycle is based around the release of papers in the major journals? Several sessions tackled this, one on the rising influence of PR and the tide of ‘churnalism’, another presenting four cases where investigative science journalism has made a real influence (particularly in the Andrew Wakefield MMR controversy, even if the journalist seemed to rate himself rather highly). Another, highly entertaining and enlightening, debate on embargoes argued if this system — almost unique in its power over science reporting — actually aided science, or was just an antiquited blockade in a digital world, preventing better reporting. Then there were the sessions on the rise of the scientist bloggers and the future of science news: will this new tide of experts spell the end for the interpretive hack? Or will we always need the journalist as a filter to guide the reader through the increasing torrents of information out there?

The most interesting point, from my perspective, was the possible role of independent research funders and charities like my employer, the Wellcome Trust. Many, like the Trust and Cancer Research UK provide their own news and blogs as sources of information alongside all the other news outlets (the Trust’s news and features feed directly into Google News, for instance). One delegate raised the point that while these are clearly ‘corporate’ in a way, they aren’t necessarily PR, and not all so-called ‘PR’ is necessarily bad.

John Rennie, a former editor of Scientific American, also raised the possibility that funders and companies may well start putting their information directly to the reader through the web, completely bypassing the traditional mainstream media. That’s gratifying from my point of view — and I’d like to think that we are as fair and accurate with the studies that we report as any newspaper would be — but I still wonder if the general public would view any news from an organisation with clearly vested interests, charity or commercial, as a trustworthy independent source of news. Then again, as another session pointed out, journalists can have their agendas too, and polls have shown that journalists come pretty low down in the rankings of professionals whom the public trust. Ben Goldacre for one, was torn as to whether this kind of communication, from a charitable organisation with a good cause, was a good thing or not. And James Harding, Editor of the Times, said, the study that showed Boots’ wrinkle cream was the most effective on the market was based on sound science –  though it was still sponsored by Boots.

As charities, funders and commercial organistions move increasingly into this, they are going to have to remember their responsibilities. After all, nobody wants to be the next Merck journal, and science news — particularly that in the mainstream media — has a major effect on people’s health decisions, sometimes with life or death at stake (which led Ben Goldacre to declare science and health journalists “murderers with blood on their hands”).

Crisis? What crisis?

The second theme that kept cropping up was whether science media was in crisis. The media industry is clearly undergoing some major changes, pressured by the twin threats of digital distribution and the declining economy. Print media is certainly under threat, but from what I heard, this may well be for the better. It has to evolve as audiences seek their news and reading from different sources. While a few  bemoaned job cuts and the loss of whole science departments, others pointed out that there are probably way too many journalists in general (Wired UK’s Ben Hammersley, who delighted all by declaring that half of the journalists in attendance would probably be out of a job soon).

The argument is that the best writers will out — survival of the fittest — and that’s true to some extent. But, as discussed above, there are other outlets for good science writers. Moreover, many are adapting to use the new tools of the digital age to supplement their reporting. Blogs, Twitter, YouTube, AudioBoo, podcasts — many journalists (well, mostly the tech journalists) are picking their medium to suit the story. Steve Mirsky, from the Scientific American podcast, pointed out that a story on bird calls wouldn’t necessarily be newsworthy in the print medium, but if there are audio clips that rises quite high in the news values of a podcast. And Rory Cellen-Jones, the BBC’s Tech correspondent, told of how the BBC’s hierarchy and procedures mean that sometimes a quick video clip he’s shot on the go can take 5 people and 6 hours to get onto the BBC Online website, when he knows he could put it on YouTube in 45 minutes. But it depends on the audience and medium that best suits the content.

So is there a crisis? Not on the world scale. The fantastic attendence from international delegates provided plenty of examples of how science reporting is expanding in emerging countries, particularly in Africa. Juliana Rotich gave a couple of excellent talks on how Global Voices is gathering and translating the work of bloggers from all over the world to highlight important issues often lost in the international news agenda. And wonderful talks from SciDev.Net’s Christina Scott, Alex Abutu from the News Agency of Nigeria and Diran Onifade of the Nigerian Television Authority, showed how science journalism is helping expose bad science and improve healthcare and government policies. And as if to underline the rise of science journalism in the developing world, Egypt won the bid to host the next WCSJ in 2011.

Digital change, more partnerships

I don’t think anyone at the conference was under any illusions that science journalism — or more precisely, science communication — is certainly changing. Collaboration seems the solution seen by many. Krishna Bharat of Google News, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly called for cooperation rather than competition, encouraging links and even mooting the idea that Wikipedia entries were a kind of ‘living story’, with reference to the evolving entry on swine flu. And Jeff Nesbit, of the National Science Foundation, told how they were attempting to fill the gap left by declining science coverage in the US media by commissioning videos to push to news organisations. Whether that is a bit too close to churnalism and the ‘influence of PR’ is debatable (it certainly raised more than a few eyebrows in the audience), but as I wrote above, I’m intrigued by the future role that science funders will have to play in communicating directly with the public on the research that they fund, and their overall role in raising the profile of science.

There’s also the increasing number of scientist bloggers to work with. Many champion this kind of expert opinion, now readily available, but others ask whether the average reader would know where to seek this out and, more importantly, have the time or inclination to read through hundreds of webpages before deciding their opinion. Running the risk of sounding obvious, there’s always going to be a role for the journalist in cutting through that and the mainstream media in gathering all that a person would want into an easily navigatable package that one can fit into a busy life. But there’s certainly scope for more discussion between journalists and bloggers, and several of the sessions demonstrated how scientist blogs are providing good background information and contacts for reporters.

Good memories

Whilst intellectually stimulating, the conference was also tremendous fun. It was a great chance to meet a lot of people: old friends, colleagues and contacts whom I’d previously only known through email or Twitter (particularly many from the far reaches of the world).

Speaking of Twitter, that was perhaps the most invigorating part of the conference for me. Many of us were ‘live-tweeting’ from the conference, having a convesation on the web on top of the discussions during sessions. With so many interesting sessions on at the same time, it was a fantastic way of keeping informed of interesting points being raised elsewhere at the conference, not to mention a wonderful service for the many journalists who could not attend the conference at all (for a better description of the merits of Twitter and the WCSJ, see this post on Not Exactly Rocket Science, and you can relive the whole WCSJ tweet experience over at wthashtag).

What I had expected to be a bit of a navel-gazing three days was, in a way, exactly that. But who’d have thought you’d find such interesting material there? It was hard on the liver (journalists like their drink of course!) but you can’t beat the experience of drinking wine under the Diplodocus at the Natural History Museum.

There’s plenty more (and more detailed) coverage of the conference out there on the web. I’ve compiled a list of the best in a post over on the ABSW blog.