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Welcome to Econnect Communication’s April 2007 newsletter –
‘Highlights of the World Conference of Science Journalists’.
Our team was very much involved in this event with Jenni,
Michelle, Tara and Melanie (and Meg from Biotext’s Brisbane
office) attending, while the others cheered from the sidelines
(Mary from holidays in Paris).
With Jenni being the current President of the Australian Science
Communicators, it also meant lots of speaking gigs in nice
frocks.
If you made it to the conference, please share your highlights
with us. We look forward to checking out the
‘post-conference’ web, which will include blogs, photos, and
podcasts.
It is with much sadness that we farewell Sarah Bartlett from our
team this month. We will miss her hugely, and know that many of
you will too. But we wish her the best during her next
three-month assignment working with CSIRO in Darwin.
Regards,
Econnect Communication
Jenni Metcalfe, Michelle Riedlinger, Mary O’Callaghan, Sarah
Bartlett, Melanie McKenzie, Tara Thorne, and Shonette Wilder.
In this issue: Highlights of
the World Conference of Science Journalists
Lessons from the media room at
WCSJ
Is science going to the dogs?
Writing
plain English
Surf club
Quotation of
the month
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Lessons from the media room at WCSJ
By
Michelle Riedlinger
The only sessions I saw at the WCSJ were the ones I was
involved in. We’ll be podcasting these sessions — the
Message Design Workshop and Coal: Fuel of the Future — on
the
Australian Science Communicators website shortly.
The conference highlight for me was working in the media
room the
Australian Science Media Centre (AusSMC).
We arranged media briefings each day and organised
interviews for some of the visiting delegates. This
experience reinforced some of the important ingredients for
getting media coverage at conferences:
-
Have
your talent available and on-call at all hours.
Encourage them to visit the media room at breaks to
check what is coming up, and keep tabs on them at
evening functions.
-
Make
sure you have one good story to release instead of
someone who can ‘speak’ on a number of topics
-
Keep a
diary of interviews so that you don’t double-book your
talent.
-
Have
volunteers looking after talent, i.e. taking them to
interview rooms.
-
Arrange some quiet space for telephone interviews.
-
If you
are running two briefings, have two rooms available for
interviews afterwards.
-
Ensure
a strong internet connection is available at all times.
Thanks to the AusSMC crew and Sarah Brooker, Florienne Loder,
and Andrew Bullen for their help with everything, from
delegate contact details to computer malfunctions!
Is science going to the dogs?
By
Meg Heaslop of Biotext
Is science losing its way? Is the pressure to
‘publish or perish’ causing scientists to compromise
their ethics and look for short cuts — such as
tweaking results for maximum exposure in the
academic press?
Not necessarily, according to experts at the World
Congress of Science Journalists (WCSJ). However,
Australia is putting into place guidelines that
should stop this happening, just in case.
Warwick Anderson (National Health and Medical
Research Council) discussed how Australia is leading
the way in preventing scientific fraud by releasing
a new national code of responsible research conduct.
The code, which will be released in the next few
months, provides guidance to all members of the
research community in how to maintain high standards
of research integrity — and what to do when these
standards break down.
The international research community is watching the
code with interest, as it sets out a new framework
for research organisations to investigate and deal
with research misconduct. This was welcomed by the
members of the WCSJ panel, who emphasised the need
for stricter controls to protect whistleblowers in
cases of scientific fraud.
You can read more about the research code on the
National Health and Medical Research Council’s
website.
Writing plain English
By Tara Thorne
From a writer’s perspective, one of my conference highlights
was Jill Nicholson’s Writing plain English workshop.
Despite the title, the workshop was not about the Plain
English movement. Rather, Jill’s aim was to cover the basic
elements of good writing in an hour and a half — no mean
feat.
Jill started by sharing her list of top ten writing problems
with us. The list included overlong sentences, weak verbs
and abstract nouns, unparallel language, and excessive use
of jargon (a problem most science writers have to watch out
for!).
Something that particularly interested me was the reluctance
of some scientists in the workshop to let go of passive
language. A lot of scientists do write actively these days,
which is great, but old habits die hard for others.
One participant commented that the passive style was the way
scientists had always written, so why change? Jill explained
that scientists should go against tradition and write in
active language to shorten and ‘smarten’ their writing.
Jill also emphasised the importance of always considering
your audience.
The workshop was a good refresher for those already involved
in professional writing, and a great introduction for less
experienced writers.
Surf club
The Australian Science Media Centre, based in Adelaide, is a
first port of call for journalists looking for interesting
science stories.
Their overall goal is to stimulate public debate based on the
best scientific information available.
http://www.aussmc.org/
Quotation of the month
‘Science
knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is
the torch which illuminates the world.’
Louis Pasteur |
