Blogger Bora Zivkovic alerted me via Facebook to an interesting post by Sheril Kirshenbaum (left) on her Discover Magazine blog, The Intersection. She asked her Facebook friends what they thought about the future of science writing, and she reprints their comments in her post, entitled “The Science Writing Renaissance.”
Take a look at the discussion, and the additional comments that the post attracted.
I was happy to see the discussion, because I think we are in the midst of a science-writing renaissance. I posted the following on Kirshenbaum’s page:
I think science writing is booming. I’m not sure whether it’s better to compare it to the California gold rush or the Homestead Act, which gave 160 acres to anybody who would go out and grab it. There seem to be opportunities to write, blog, and report everywhere. Before the Internet era, people used to sneer that freedom of the press belonged to him who owned one. A press, that is–an expensive piece of equipment, virtually always owned by white males. Now, we all own a printing press, and we have a much larger potential audience than even William Randolph Hearst had at his peak. If you borrow a computer and use the free wireless at Starbuck’s, the cost of a press is zero. The only thing that stops any science journalist from producing solid reporting for an audience of 10 million people is his or her own ingenuity.
It’s also true that salaries are not booming the way opportunities are. But journalists have always started by working for years for next to nothing, until they could claw their way into a job that actually paid a wage, but usually involved working lousy hours on a beat that no one cared about. It took a lot more clawing to get a job on the city staff, or as a specialist.
And it’s no different now. Write. Find a way to cover your rent. And if you’re good, and passionate, and persistent, you can drop the other job and make a living at this. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be starting a new teaching gig. I’m optimistic that the students will find jobs. The printing presses are out there, waiting to be used.
– Paul Raeburn
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