Getting a feel for freelancing

Hi all, I'm Allison MacLachlan, an NASW Graduate Travel Fellow this year. I am currently a Master's student in MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing, and am very much looking forward to attending my first NASW meeting this coming weekend. 
 
Originally from Toronto, I recently graduated from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where I did my undergraduate degree in English and Life Sciences. Along the way, I worked as a contributor and an editor at the Queen's Journal, where I developed an interest in writing news and features. I also managed the science side of a student-run magazine called Syndicus, which publishes articles and essays on fun, quirky academic topics for a lay audience.

This year, I'm writing as a correspondent for MIT's Scope and am having a great time exploring lots of new and unfamiliar scientific territory. My recent articles on Scope cover topics like internet mapping, artificial skin and the link between urbanization and tuberculosis. Currently, I'm working on a feature story about synaesthesia and a thesis project that traces our culture's relationship with aspartame.

This weekend, I will be blogging about the "Profitable Freelancing" session. Having been advised many times that every writer will freelance at some point in his or her career, I think this workshop will provide some valuable insights into a field that remains somewhat mysterious to me. I am interested in the relationship between writing and business, and look forward to learning more about how ideas like productivity and efficiency relate to the writing process. See you in New Haven!

On Books & Flying Buttresses

Hello there, I'm Emily Voigt, another of this year's freelance travel fellows, coming to New Haven from New York City. This will be my first time attending the ScienceWriters conference (thank you NASW!) and I'll be covering the workshop "Great science writing part II: Building the big book" on Saturday afternoon. I love the session's concept of books as "cathedrals of thought, style and fact" designed to outlast our individual attention spans. It's a particularly nice entry-point for panelist and immortality expert Jonathan Weiner (whose class on literary science writing first drew me into the field). If death is the ultimate deadline -- and the impetus for so many pyramid-like human ventures -- could immortality spell the end of books??

I certainly hope not, because I'd really like to live forever AND write a book. I'm currently a freelance journalist and have written and produced science stories for the New York Times, OnEarth Magazine, Radiolab, Isotope, and Odyssey (a science magazine for 12 and up). I came to science by way of literature and used to be an associate book editor at Oxford University Press. I'm especially fond of writing about the intersection of science, philosophy, and art. You can check out my work on my website. I'm looking forward to connecting with many of you this weekend!

Funding journalism: An experimental science

I came across a glossy advert the other day for the Wall Street Journal wine buying club. That might have had something to do with my choice to cover New Funding Models for Journalism (and, okay, it was one of the few unclaimed sessions). Is this how the WSJ is meeting payroll these days, by peddling red wine?

With more than 100 newspapers shuttered last year alone, I wonder and worry about the funding for our profession, but I'm usually writing about things like microbes, plants, Alaska, global change, and any aspect of life science--even the genetic roots of red wine. I'm a long-time NASW member, though this is my first stand-alone science writers conference thanks to the Travel Fellowship. I've been a magazine writer (Science, Science News), a book/report editor (Columbia University Press, Smithsonian Institution Press, the late lamented U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment), a writing instructor/coach, a Knight Science Journalism Fellow, and an occasional newspaper reporter. Two of the four dailies I've freelanced for have gone the way of the dodo.

If readers and advertising will no longer pay for journalism, who or what should? Government? Philanthropy? A sideline of merchandise? With the rise of the wild wild web as the source of all information, it's become almost a scientific question, with many experiments in progress. Stay tuned to hear about three of them on Saturday afternoon.

Image: Vitis vinifera, Florida Center for Instructional Technology

Who Wouldn't Want to Experiment in New Media?

I'm Cori Vanchieri, a freelance editor and writer who's fascinated by science and medicine. As a freelancer, it's easy to lose track of the myriad efforts to reach readers through new media. Who's got time to keep track of what's working and what's not? As a winner of an NASW travel fellowship, I'll be blogging from the NASW session "Experiments in New Media" and will report on the experiences of those who've been there, done that. The session was organized by Denise Graveline and Joe Bonner, so you know it'll be entertaining and informative. They're promising stories of startling successes and failures that led to greatness.

I've been a science writer since the late '80s, freelancing since 1997. The thrill for me is finding a good science story and telling it really well. I love to work with writers to help them turn their reporting into engaging, understandable stories. These days, I'm an editor for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's four-color magazine called HHMI Bulletin and for Cleveland Clinic Magazine. Other clients include IOM, JNCI, Fit Pregnancy, NIH, AAMC and a bunch of other acronyms. If I don't see you at the meeting, keep an eye out for my blog posts.

Greetings Colleagues!

Hi I'm Karen A. Frenkel and I'm looking forward to meeting you and celebrating our organization, which is important now more than ever. I'm a Travel Fellow and will be blogging about the Civics in Science Journalism session and doing some live tweeting.

Here's what I've been up to. I'm an award-winning science/technology journalist, editor, and author. I also have made two documentaries about the impact of technology on society for public television––one on women and computing, the other about elearning. I write for many kinds of readers: lay, professional, business, kids, and pretty much anyone interested in high-technology and science. I also have a very strong interest in science, technology, and culture.

I began my career covering robotics and computer science and still report on both. What I love about these fields is that they are interdisciplinary. Recently, I've expanded into neuroscience and am interested in the influences of research on the mind and brain on computer science and artificial intelligence, and vice versa. I freelance for Science Magazine, SciAm.com, Scientific American, Scientific American MIND, and Communications of the ACM, the magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery.

My newest blog is for The Foundation for Psychocultural Research, whose mission is to advance and support interdisciplinary research and training in neuroscience, psychiatry, and anthropology. I have also blogged and about science, technology and the arts for ScienceFriday.com, the site for the NPR show. Previously, I covered the same beat for TalkingScience.org, a sister site founded as a forum for discussing issues regarding science media.

If you'd like to know more, here's my website and my Twitter handle is KarenAFrenkel.

Online commentary: more than just noise?

Hello! I’m John Cannon, and I’m attending my first ScienceWriters conference on a NASW freelance fellowship. On Friday I’ll make the trek east from my home in California by car, plane, bus and train (I couldn't work in a boat ride) to New Haven.

I’ll be covering the discussion titled “The social web and online commenting: Making it work for journalism.” I've always said that I became a journalist so I could join and stimulate the broader conversation concerning our place in a complex world. Now, that conversation happens in real time, beginning as soon as a story is posted with the musings of inspired (or incensed) readers.

Online comments on my own stories have cut a wide swath – sometimes thoughtful, even suggesting new angles and avenues for exploration I hadn't thought of, and sometimes outright belligerent, from readers on the fringes of the discussion. Managing this real-time commentary can be a challenge. As journalists, most of us recoil at the thought of anything resembling censorship, but as is often the case on the Web, we also have to filter out the cacophonous noise to find the underlying melody. The panelists for this discussion, all experts on this issue, will help us work out the best way to harness this online commentary as a new tool to advance the conversation.

A snapshot of my background: Since beginning my freelance career a year and a half ago, I've written for publications including New Scientist, ScienceNOW, Bicycle Times, and Scientists without Borders. Some of my work is posted at my website. I’m a 2008 graduate of the UC Santa Cruz science communication program. Before that, I studied biology and philosophy as an undergrad, worked in labs and in the field studying everything from cytokines to sperm whales, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa.

Feel free to leave a comment...

Lies and Statistics

Hi all, I'm Sandeep Ravindran, one of the NASW graduate travel fellows. I'm a Science Communication graduate student at UC Santa Cruz. I'm excited to be attending my first NASW conference, and I look forward to seeing some familiar faces and meeting lots of new people.

Mark Twain popularized the quote, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." I don't think statistics are usually quite that bad, but they can often be tricky to interpret and report on accurately. And getting statistics right is especially crucial when writing about science.

That's why I'll be blogging about "Get the numbers right: A workshop on reporting statistics", where I look forward to learning more about the common errors reporters make when writing about statistics. The session will also offer practical advice that I'll share with readers of this blog.

I certainly had to deal with my share of statistics during my graduate research in microbiology and immunology. I graduated in 2009 with a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and by then I knew I wanted to pursue a career in science writing. I freelanced a bit and also spent an enjoyable (and busy) 10 months as an editorial intern at Popular Science and Science Illustrated magazines in New York City.

I then decided to go back to school, and will graduate from UC Santa Cruz next June. You can find out more about me and what I've published at my website. I'll also send the occasional tweet from the conference @sandeeprtweets.