Some years ago, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker, of Science Online fame, decided to create a place where the best science blogging could be featured. That project, called the Open Laboratory, became so successful that it eventually grew into an admired annual anthology. The Best Science Writing Online 2012 was published last year by Scientific America/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
But as Zivkovic thought about it, he realized that many excellent online science stories are also told not by written words but in sound, image, video and other multimedia formats. And it was this idea that led to a collaboration with other like-minded creative science communicators and the announcement yesterday of a new project, Science Studio. As one of the Science Studio founders, Rose Eveleth explained: "We love Open Lab, but we were a little sad because there’s a lot of great science journalism out there that isn’t found in typed words – it’s made of sound or graphics or animations. So we got to thinking – what if we had an Open Lab for multimedia?"
But where to start with all the multimedia possibilities? The founding organizers – Eveleth and Zivkovic and Ben Lillie, director of The Story Collider – chose to begin with audio as the first category in Science Studio. The project has received a start-up grant from the National Association of Science Writers and the organizers have also launched a Kickstarter drive to bring in additional funding. But nomination process is already open for those who have a podcast, a radio show, and other science-related audio that they would like to enter.
This is such a good idea that I could wish we'd thought of it here at Tracker first. But in lieu of that, I'd like to encourage you to submit your best audio story, to support the Kickstarter campaign, and to spread the word. This is another excellent step in making the internet one of the most exciting places to tell a science story.
— Deborah Blum
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