The future of science writing

Last weekend in North Carolina, I saw the future of science writing.

Some 300 bright, enthusiastic and energetic science bloggers–scientists and journalists among them–gathered in Research Triangle Park for ScienceOnline 2011. The mood was vastly different from what you might encounter in a traditional newsroom. The black humor, cynicism and ironic detachment of newspaper newsrooms was replaced by an eagerness to learn and a willingness to share. These folks–and I count myself among them–love what they do. Unlike me, they don’t crow about discovering the future of science writing–they are creating it.

The conference, run by Bora Zivkovic, the editor of Scientific American‘s blog network, and Anton Zuiker, director of communications for the Duke Department of Medicine, is now in its fifth year. It differs from most other science and journalism conferences by welcoming scientists, journalists, and bloggers–who can be one or the other, or a little bit of both–as equal participants. Journalists were not there to cover science, and scientists were not there to report results. We were all there to share ideas.

The panels and hallway discussions ranged from the nuts-and-bolts of blogging to big thoughts.

A session entitled Web 2.0wned was an excellent tutorial on broadening one’s reach on the web. “Social media technologies are changing the way science information is passed between scientists, journalists, and readers–for better or worse,” the organizers wrote. “We think it’s for the better, and that resistance is futile.” It was organized by bloggers Arikia Millikan, Dave Mosher, and Taylor Dobbs, the latter the son of prominent science blogger David Dobbs. Taylor, from whom I learned a lot in an hour, is an undergraduate college student.

David Dobbs and several colleagues tackled one of many big issues in a panel on “open science”–“the need to not only make all science publications open-access, but to change current research, publication, and reputational structures to take full advantage of the internet, and to accelerate and enrich the flow and development of scientific data, idea, findings, and discussion.”

Bloggers Ed Yong, Virginia Hughes, John Rennie and Steve Silberman tackled the question of whether the web changes our perception of what is newsworthy. “What attributes are valuable in online science journalism – do we really care about things like scoops, or is context king?” It’s been a while since I’ve thought about what makes something newsworthy; that became second nature to me long ago. It was refreshing to be able to re-examine that.

That’s a sampling. I’m sorry I can’t mention all of the sessions, but you can take a look at the program wiki if you’d like the complete rundown.

Conference participants tracked many of the sessions and talks on Twitter, unleashing a blast of tweets that gave those of us who were there a chance to see a kind of instant replay of almost everything that happened (including a few things that happened in the wee hours, which I will delicately omit here). The tweets might not give you a complete picture of the conference if you weren’t there, but if you’d like to sample them, search for the hashtag #scio11. More information is also available at ScienceOnline2011.

As a journalist, I had one lingering question that wasn’t, as far as I know, directly addressed at the conference. The best science writers have always tried to separate whatever enthusiasm they have for science from their coverage, in which they aim for objectivity. For journalists, science is neither officially good nor bad; we try to tell readers what happens, without taking sides or cheering for success or failure. Many of the scientist-bloggers at the conference professed no such objectivity, nor should they. They have as much right to promote science as I do to promote good journalism. But it’s important, I think, that we remember who’s who.

Emily Anthes, whose Wonderland blog is part of the PLOS blogs network, raised a question this week about whom science bloggers are writing for. While acknowledging that the web provides broad new opportunities for science writers, she wondered whether science bloggers are just writing for each other. “Are the debates we’re having really reaching a wider audience?…Should that even be our goal?”

The goal of journalists should be to reach that wider audience, I’d suggest. But the goal for science bloggers, or scientist-bloggers, might be different.

Count on that question being addressed at next year’s conference, along with several others that haven’t yet occurred to anyone, but will likely be at the top of our agenda by then.

– Paul Raeburn