The Observatory
Science Journalism
Past, present, and futuristic
By Curtis Brainard Fri 22 Feb 2008 10:55 AMAround the block from the Miracle of Science café, in a corner of Cambridge surrounding the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a few hundred of the world’s most accomplished science journalists gathered this week to celebrate history, and spend a lot of time talking about the road ahead.
The occasion was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships, a prestigious program that brings a handful of mid-career professionals to MIT for a year of concentrated study. The program, titled The Future of Science Journalism, was a series of talks about past, present, and upcoming trends in the field-some terrifying, some terrific. As the fellowships’ director, Boyce Rensberger, put it in a welcome speech that could not resist at least one science crack, “With respect to the ghost of Stephen Jay Gould, there has been a punctuation in what we thought was a relatively comfortable equilibrium.”
It is undoubtedly a momentous occasion in the history of science journalism-the challenge of climate change, the advertising of major pharmaceutical companies, the muzzling of government researchers-but a lot of journalists’ and outside pundits are unsure whether the journalism is improving or deteriorating. History, after all, will judge us, Rensberger reminded the crowded ballroom in a fascinating, opening-day lecture chronicling the field’s prior phases. The profession as we know it today, he said, began in the late nineteenth century, steadily gaining seriousness of purpose until 1930s, when (ironically) the foundation of the National Association of Science Writers ushered in the “cheerleader or gee-whiz age of science journalism.” The next several decades saw a lot of credulous “boosterism,” many conflicts of interest, and other ethical breaches on the part of the press. This lasted until the 1970s, when the environmental movement began and The New York Times launched its venerable, weekly science section. At that time, Rensberger said, journalism moved from, “science lapdog to public watchdog.” This condition lasted until roughly eight years ago (when the Bush administration’s antipathy toward science and science journalism, as well as the spread of digital media, shook the profession’s foundations), and now it is unclear what will become of the profession.
As the media industry undergoes great, digital metamorphosis, the turbulence of transformation has made a lot passengers sick. But needlessly so? Perhaps. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, told the audience that there is “a golden age of science journalism ahead.” But many people in the crowd seemed disconcerted by his description of that future, Internet-centric world. There, he said, journalists’ work will be not be the “final destinations” for readers; instead, journalists will be acting more as navigators, aggregators, explainers, and referees for all the other available information. That characterization, though perhaps taken to be more pervasive than Rosenstiel meant it to be, provoked quite a few reactions. David Dobbs, a freelancer who writes about neuroscience for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American, asked, “If we’re pointing out the best dishes in the buffet, who’s cooking the pressed duck?”
It’s too bad, given his background, that Rosenstiel didn’t discuss how to maintain or elevate quality standards as journalism goes digital. All the talk about the changing roles of journalists and the new skills and responsibilities that come with new media platforms got much more insightful and specific treatment in later talks. In fact, after the first morning of the conference, the focus shifted quickly from the past, touched briefly on the present (Cristine Russell, the president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, presented interesting data on the dwindling number of science journalists in the U.S., the growing number worldwide, and the current mix of challenges and opportunities facing field), and fixated on the future.
The discussion of what’s next was organized around two major themes: blogging and interactive multimedia packages. Despite all the buzz about these topics over the last few years, there is obviously still a lot of uncertainty and trepidation surrounding them. Why, when, and how to launch a blog or Flashy (like the software) graphic are not the only unresolved questions. The more fundamental puzzlement-are these products journalism?-still pops up surprisingly often, and many journalists seem to struggle with what should, by now, be a pretty simple answer: sometimes.
MSNBC.com’s Alan Boyle, who runs the blog Cosmic Log and has spent a significant amount of time developing impressive multimedia packages, tried his best to dispel some of the remaining fog about the increasing frequency of graphical elements used to buttress traditional reporting. He offered a nuts-and-bolts presentation of what is possible with varying degrees of interactivity, and the minimum newsroom resources and know-how (a three-person team with a point man, which he likened to Charlie’s Angels) to pitch and produce such a project.
Boyle’s matter-of-fact lecture contrasted with a talk the next day by Henry Jenkins, the co-director of MIT’s comparative media program, whose talk moved farther away from the realm of traditional journalism. Jenkins stressed the lessons for reporters in modern pop culture, highlighting video games like Spore, a Sim City-like product that allows users to create a life form and put it through the rigors of evolution. “This is usually something that’s covered on the entertainment page,” he told the crowd, “But shouldn’t science journalists be engaging with a game like Spore on the science page and explaining the underlying principles?” It was good point, but Jenkins doesn’t want reporters to merely cover these games, he wants them to emulate them in news packages. “Traditional journalism doesn’t ask [readers] to do anything,” he said, and creative new Web sites, “teach the public to think scientifically rather than just report science.” But many of Jenkins’ examples seemed to blur the line between genuine reportage and educational toys.
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DaveD![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
Wed 27 Feb 2008 01:53 PMNice write-up, Mr. Brainard. As one of the attendees -- the one who asked "Who will cook the pressed duck?" (see above) -- I was both intrigued and often alarmed by the emphasis on "new media" and its definition, seemingly, as something that did not involve reading very many words at one time. That was the meeting's declared focus, of course, and this was MIT, so I can hardly be surprised at this emphasis. But as my pressed duck worry attests, the look at new media seemed to have a little too much cheerleading and not enough skepticism, much like the early science reporting that Rensberger talked about.
Particularly bothersome to me was the assumption -- implicit in the language used, especially by Henry Jenkins in his otherwise fascinating talk -- that reading is not "participatory." Jenkins repeatedly talked about the need to offer the reader/consumer a "participatory" form of engagement. Perhaps what he really means is social -- something that involves more than just text (or text and image) and reader. But the repeated use of the word participatory for multimedia and "interactive" media forms clearly suggests -- seems to assume -- that reading is not participatory. I would argue otherwise, for reading is a deeply participatory process. That's why you have to pay attention when you read in ways that perhaps other media don't necessarily demand.