The ABSW Executive Committee is setting aside funds to help establish regional groups for members outside of London.
A recent survey asked ABSW members where you would like to see ABSW events hosted. Overwhelmingly, people wanted to meet in London. But there was a strong call for events in Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and Brighton. Other individuals requested events in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester/Leeds, and Ipswich.
There has already been one event, an informal pub meet-up, in Brighton and two further events are planned in Bristol and the North (details below).
The ABSW Executive Committee has a small pot of money available for regional members who organise events outside of London. The scheme aims to provide a service for the many members who find it hard to get to events in London. It's essentially an opportunity to have a few drinks and some networking on the ABSW's tab. Organisers of events can also use the funding to pay to invite guests or speakers.
A subsidy of £5 per paid up ABSW member is available per person attending an ABSW regional event. For any event you must let us know in advance that you are organizing it, and a minimum of four members must attend to qualify.
Payment is made in arrears, with the organizer invoicing the ABSW afterwards via Paypal or electronic transfer. We also request a few lines about the event for publishing here in The Science Reporter to help encourage future activities, and that organizers provide a list of members who attended.
The funding for regional events is capped at £300. I would estimate that a third of this is already accounted for, so there is plenty left. If members find this a useful service, the Committee will seek to make similar funds available again next year.
A list of ABSW Regional Coordinators is below. If you live in an area where there is no regional coordinator and would like to start a group up in your area and be put in contact with local members please email.
Natasha Loder
ABSW Chair
ABSW Regional Coordinators
Bristol
Hayley Birch
Brighton
Michael Kenward
Cambridge
Ben Vasler
North
Paula Gould
Regional meetings
ABSW Southwest
The next meeting of the Southwest regional group will be in Bristol at the King Bill, 7pm. Wednesday 16th September 2009.
ABSW North
Helen Gavaghan and Paula Gould are meeting for coffee at The Media Centre in Huddersfield (close to the railway station), at 11am on Monday 7th September. All full and associate members are invited to join for the inaugural meeting of ABSW in the North. The Media Centre is at 7 Northumberland Street, Huddersfield and is only a few minutes walk from the railway station.
Showing posts with label ABSW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ABSW. Show all posts
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
ABSW: Tell us what your rates are
A new online pay survey should help freelancers determine their worth.
It is hard to know how to price your freelance writing and editing services fairly. Am I underpricing myself, or losing jobs because the amount I’m asking is too steep? Pitching for large projects can sometimes feel like a shot in the dark.
For the sake of all freelancers, we need to make sure that we're neither routinely under- or over-charging clients. If ABSW members share the information we have on pay rates, we can all benefit.
So, following discussions at the World Conference of Science Journalists, the ABSW Executive Committee has established an online pay survey to make the most of the ABSW members’ shared knowledge and experience.
All contributions are anonymous. Freelancers can add information on what they’ve been offered, paid, or what they hear the pay is for a particular job for a particular publication or outlet. If you’re not a freelancer you can still contribute by providing information on the standard rates offered by the publication or organisation that you work for.
There’s been a brilliant response to the survey so far. Particularly interesting was the variation in reported offers of pay per 1000 words. For one month this ranged from £85 per 1000 words to £700 per 1000 words!
The results of the survey are being circulated as a spreadsheet every month or so on the ABSW-L, so sign up to receive the regular updates. If you prefer not to subscribe to the list, but would like to receive the spreadsheet, please email and I will send through a copy. Use the same email address if you have any suggestions or comments on the survey too.
Thanks to everyone one who’s contributed so far. Keep it coming!
Chrissie Giles
ABSW Online Pay Survey Coordinator
It is hard to know how to price your freelance writing and editing services fairly. Am I underpricing myself, or losing jobs because the amount I’m asking is too steep? Pitching for large projects can sometimes feel like a shot in the dark.
For the sake of all freelancers, we need to make sure that we're neither routinely under- or over-charging clients. If ABSW members share the information we have on pay rates, we can all benefit.
So, following discussions at the World Conference of Science Journalists, the ABSW Executive Committee has established an online pay survey to make the most of the ABSW members’ shared knowledge and experience.
All contributions are anonymous. Freelancers can add information on what they’ve been offered, paid, or what they hear the pay is for a particular job for a particular publication or outlet. If you’re not a freelancer you can still contribute by providing information on the standard rates offered by the publication or organisation that you work for.
There’s been a brilliant response to the survey so far. Particularly interesting was the variation in reported offers of pay per 1000 words. For one month this ranged from £85 per 1000 words to £700 per 1000 words!
The results of the survey are being circulated as a spreadsheet every month or so on the ABSW-L, so sign up to receive the regular updates. If you prefer not to subscribe to the list, but would like to receive the spreadsheet, please email and I will send through a copy. Use the same email address if you have any suggestions or comments on the survey too.
Thanks to everyone one who’s contributed so far. Keep it coming!
Chrissie Giles
ABSW Online Pay Survey Coordinator
Thursday, 25 June 2009
FEATURE: The future of the ABSW
Sometime during the World Conference of Science Journalists, the ABSW chair will pass from Ted Nield to myself. Those who are finely attuned to the constitutional details of our association will be aware that chair of the ABSW is neither passed on, nor handed over, but is elected by our membership after the AGM in January. In the absence of nominations at our AGM earlier this year, Ted felt compelled to remain in office - even though this was for an unconstitutional three plus years.
Now, however, Ted feels that it is time to stand down as chair and the committee has agreed. As with previous chairs, he will join the committee to keep an eye on the new chair. I shall stand for election next January in the normal way but I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Ted for his work and commitment to the ABSW. His tenure will be particularly remembered for its vision and leadership with regards to the forthcoming World Conference.
On June 29th we will hold a special meeting for members to debate how the ABSW should operate and what our priorities will be over the next few years. This discussion will not only serve to re-invigorate the association but also to give your un-elected chair a mandate for the future. As of June 15th, more than 45 members are planning to attend our meeting, co-chaired by our President Colin Blakemore at the Dana Centre in South Kensington. An online survey is also heading your way, so we can gather opinions and ideas from everyone.
Let me start by saying that these are difficult times. Over the years we have seen a consistent decline in sponsorship and this has eroded the association’s finances. It is with profound regret that our much-loved administrator, Barbie Drillsma, has been offered redundancy. It is impossible to express sufficient gratitude for Barbie’s commitment to the association over the decades. Thank you Barbie. And thank you for being such a rock, and so utterly professional, about every aspect of these unfortunate changes.
As the saying goes, through crisis comes opportunity. If we are smart, we can keep the association relevant and useful. Barbie’s departure demands that we focus on providing the continuity and networking that she provided for us. There are also a number of organisational challenges that we will need to figure out. I hope members will bear with us while we deal with all the changes, and, inevitably, make mistakes.
One of our priorities is to operate far more efficiently using the website as well as other online tools and services. Mike Nagle is currently redesigning the website, which should allow us to serve our membership better and ultimately allow members to administer their own memberships, pay their dues online, and promote themselves on our website. Mike outlined these changes in a previous edition of the TSR. Increasingly the committee is exploiting online tools to organise meetings, to discuss and draft documents and to communicate with members. This electronic trend is likely to continue.
Our AGM this year made it clear that one of our priorities ought to be the re-establishment of our awards. At our last AGM, there was a lot of discussion about this. To summarise the points made: large-scale sponsorship for big awards has become harder to arrange, indeed impossible since 2006 after the loss of our previous sponsor; we cannot rely on sponsorship for our awards. If we do, we will find that in some years awards cannot be run; members say they don’t care about big cash prizes, or fancy awards ceremonies, they wish their professional association to recognise good work and that is enough in itself.
Given the above, it seems that we need to establish a way to administer some kind of awards at very low cost, even in the absence of sponsorship. So this year, with the support of the committee, we trialled a new electronic tool for administering a Best Newcomer prize. (The winner of this award will be announced during the World Conference in June.) The success of this method means we can now contemplate running a limited number of awards of low cash value in 2010 in the absence of a sponsor and without an event.
We would, however, need to charge a small fee for processing applications and organising the judging. This would be in line with the charges made by other associations such as ours for unsponsored awards. The awards would also need help from members to organise. For example, someone would need to arrange a judging day, and do a bit of administration. Of course, if sponsorship is secured, our awards could be scaled up accordingly. But I believe that it is possible to run basic awards in the absence of sponsorship and that we should try to set ourselves up to do so.
My priorities for the association are to promote a lively and revitalised series of events for members comprising seminars, training, lunches and trips, as well as debates and perhaps an annual lecture or sponsored dinner. I’d also like us to republish So You Want To Be a Science Writer, as well as figure out a way to make progress on re-establishing bursaries. I’m also very keen to use the power of our association to offer more services to members. For example we recently offered members subscription to the headline and caption-writing service Phrasefinder, on the basis of a group subscription. There may be other examples of this kind of thing that we are able to help with by negotiating similar deals, from cut-price software to reduced insurance rates.
I encourage people to offer suggestions for how we might better serve our members. [Note that you can do this via our member survey -Ed] In particular, I’d encourage you to volunteer to help organise the things that you would like to see happen. Bear in mind that we will always be richer in ideas than we are in resources. So much of what happens will be down to your commitment and involvement with us. We are lucky to have a particularly active group of members on the committee at the moment who I am greatly looking forward to working with.
In looking for projects that we might develop, the best ideas will be those that need a small seed of input to generate something of broader and lasting value. Please think creatively about how we should operate, and consider our limited financial but rich intellectual resources. The goal is to regenerate the ABSW - to make it more relevant for members and create an association that is adapted for the future.
Natasha Loder
Incoming Chair, ABSW
Now, however, Ted feels that it is time to stand down as chair and the committee has agreed. As with previous chairs, he will join the committee to keep an eye on the new chair. I shall stand for election next January in the normal way but I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Ted for his work and commitment to the ABSW. His tenure will be particularly remembered for its vision and leadership with regards to the forthcoming World Conference.
On June 29th we will hold a special meeting for members to debate how the ABSW should operate and what our priorities will be over the next few years. This discussion will not only serve to re-invigorate the association but also to give your un-elected chair a mandate for the future. As of June 15th, more than 45 members are planning to attend our meeting, co-chaired by our President Colin Blakemore at the Dana Centre in South Kensington. An online survey is also heading your way, so we can gather opinions and ideas from everyone.
Let me start by saying that these are difficult times. Over the years we have seen a consistent decline in sponsorship and this has eroded the association’s finances. It is with profound regret that our much-loved administrator, Barbie Drillsma, has been offered redundancy. It is impossible to express sufficient gratitude for Barbie’s commitment to the association over the decades. Thank you Barbie. And thank you for being such a rock, and so utterly professional, about every aspect of these unfortunate changes.
As the saying goes, through crisis comes opportunity. If we are smart, we can keep the association relevant and useful. Barbie’s departure demands that we focus on providing the continuity and networking that she provided for us. There are also a number of organisational challenges that we will need to figure out. I hope members will bear with us while we deal with all the changes, and, inevitably, make mistakes.
One of our priorities is to operate far more efficiently using the website as well as other online tools and services. Mike Nagle is currently redesigning the website, which should allow us to serve our membership better and ultimately allow members to administer their own memberships, pay their dues online, and promote themselves on our website. Mike outlined these changes in a previous edition of the TSR. Increasingly the committee is exploiting online tools to organise meetings, to discuss and draft documents and to communicate with members. This electronic trend is likely to continue.
Our AGM this year made it clear that one of our priorities ought to be the re-establishment of our awards. At our last AGM, there was a lot of discussion about this. To summarise the points made: large-scale sponsorship for big awards has become harder to arrange, indeed impossible since 2006 after the loss of our previous sponsor; we cannot rely on sponsorship for our awards. If we do, we will find that in some years awards cannot be run; members say they don’t care about big cash prizes, or fancy awards ceremonies, they wish their professional association to recognise good work and that is enough in itself.
Given the above, it seems that we need to establish a way to administer some kind of awards at very low cost, even in the absence of sponsorship. So this year, with the support of the committee, we trialled a new electronic tool for administering a Best Newcomer prize. (The winner of this award will be announced during the World Conference in June.) The success of this method means we can now contemplate running a limited number of awards of low cash value in 2010 in the absence of a sponsor and without an event.
We would, however, need to charge a small fee for processing applications and organising the judging. This would be in line with the charges made by other associations such as ours for unsponsored awards. The awards would also need help from members to organise. For example, someone would need to arrange a judging day, and do a bit of administration. Of course, if sponsorship is secured, our awards could be scaled up accordingly. But I believe that it is possible to run basic awards in the absence of sponsorship and that we should try to set ourselves up to do so.
My priorities for the association are to promote a lively and revitalised series of events for members comprising seminars, training, lunches and trips, as well as debates and perhaps an annual lecture or sponsored dinner. I’d also like us to republish So You Want To Be a Science Writer, as well as figure out a way to make progress on re-establishing bursaries. I’m also very keen to use the power of our association to offer more services to members. For example we recently offered members subscription to the headline and caption-writing service Phrasefinder, on the basis of a group subscription. There may be other examples of this kind of thing that we are able to help with by negotiating similar deals, from cut-price software to reduced insurance rates.
I encourage people to offer suggestions for how we might better serve our members. [Note that you can do this via our member survey -Ed] In particular, I’d encourage you to volunteer to help organise the things that you would like to see happen. Bear in mind that we will always be richer in ideas than we are in resources. So much of what happens will be down to your commitment and involvement with us. We are lucky to have a particularly active group of members on the committee at the moment who I am greatly looking forward to working with.
In looking for projects that we might develop, the best ideas will be those that need a small seed of input to generate something of broader and lasting value. Please think creatively about how we should operate, and consider our limited financial but rich intellectual resources. The goal is to regenerate the ABSW - to make it more relevant for members and create an association that is adapted for the future.
Natasha Loder
Incoming Chair, ABSW
FEATURE: Barbie – Life and Soul
Barbie, in Melody Maker days, on a pilgrimage to MaccaShe only came for three months. Now, after 17 years, Barbie Drillsma is leaving as ABSW Administrator. Ted Nield asks her: what next?
I first met Barbie in the mid 1980s when I was writing regularly for New Scientist. Now and then, if something of mine was deemed worthy of the cover, it became the subject of a news release written by the magazine’s media relations person. Barbie didn’t strike me as a typical PRO, and I guess she doesn’t strike many as a typical ‘membership organisation administrator’ either. Nevertheless she has been the life and soul of the ABSW for almost as long as I can remember.
Barbie started the hard way, indentured for three “slave” years on the Liverpool Weekly News, the Widnes Weekly News and the Runcorn Daily News. After gaining her NCTJ she freelanced for the Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Echo and various other regional papers. She got her big break when she was twice runner-up for the Woman Journalist of the Year Award, which opened the way to a string of assignments for glossy magazines, including NOVA.
Equally adept on the PR side, Barbie worked as a public relations officer for Liverpool City Council, and then landed a dream job as North West Correspondent for Melody Maker. As she describes it, Barbie’s life then seems like something out of Life on Mars – mornings covering magistrates’ courts, afternoons drinking with off-duty rossers, and evenings trailing around clubs and hotels after the biggest names in the music business.
They were, as she says, ‘heady days’ – so heady in fact that she sometimes found herself covering the court appearances of the very people she had been at gigs with the evening before. Reviewing appearances of everyone from Bowie to Zeppelin, Barbie’s frank reviews earned her the singular honour of having her picture used as a dartboard on the dressing-room door at the Marquee Club. She claims there is no connection, but at this point Barbie ran away to Katmandu for six months (people did this sort of thing then). Duly finding herself “skint in Iran, having to hitch all the way back”, she decided to start taking things seriously. After that, things begin to take on more familiar form.
Moving to London, Barbie freelanced as a media officer for a number of IPC mags and met Bernard Dixon, then Editor of New Scientist, who persuaded her to take on NS as part of her portfolio. Shortly afterwards Mike Kenward took over. Any story she didn’t understand, she tells me, she would show to a certain bass-playing PhD student she had lately met called Lionel Milgrom. Through Lawrence McGinty, who left New Scientist as News Editor, she also became media relations officer for the newly founded C4 News.
Many ABSW members will be aware of the colourful relationship that Barbie and Mike Kenward still enjoy. She tells me: “I love Mike. Really. Under that brusque exterior there’s a really kind and helpful guy, driven to total distraction by my lack of technical skills. But I am really grateful to him, because he introduced me to the world of science journalism and was very supportive over my maternity leave.”
Her fate, and that of ABSW, became linked when Pearce Wright, then Science Correspondent of The Times, invited her out (“Spot of lunch, dear heart?”) to beg three months’ help “on the admin side”. When Pearce mentioned the dreaded subject of ABSW accounts, Barbie demurred; but his reply was: “You’re a journalist – you do your expenses don’t you?” And so Barbie was hired – though she continued to write freelance in between her two official ABSW days per week (though in reality much more than that, as every ABSW Chair since Wendy Barnaby will attest).
When she joined, the ASBW had just over 200 members. Now it has nearer 600, and Barbie knows many of them personally. Highlights? “I loved it when there was more money around and reporters had time to lunch” she says. “Monthly off-record briefings at the Civil Service Club were a great success. And I adore being involved in the European Union of Science Journalists Associations (EUSJA), and making it spend its money on its members!”
So, what of the future? Barbie is not going very far away. She is still the ASBW’s EUSJA representative (and is in fact Vice President). After that, she will stay on the Executive Committee, to advise all those who will have to turn the handles after she lets them go in August. Barbie plans to perfect her French (daughter Amy lives in Paris now), keep up the freelance writing and maybe take up a part-time degree in History of Art. Or write a bonkbuster.
For the girl reporter who got thrown out of Bowie’s hotel by security for being a groupie, but who kept coming back to get the interview, persistence is a Barbie strong-point. And those heady Liverpool days ought to provide plenty of material…
Ted Nield
Outgoing Chair
ABSW
ABSW: Working party to investigate embargoes
In response to recent controversies, the ABSW Executive Committee has decided to appoint a small working party to examine the operation and application of embargoes that affect science journalists in the UK.
The objectives of the working party are: to examine the current use of embargoes that affect science journalists in the UK; to identify strengths and weaknesses in their operation and application; and to bring about improvements where necessary and possible, taking into account the best interests of ABSW members, science journalists in general, and the public interest. There will be eight members in the working party (yet to be appointed), including a secretary, and it will be chaired by ITN's Lawrence McGinty.
Practices both in and outside of the UK will be considered, as embargoes operate beyond national borders. The working party will collect evidence, information and views from ABSW members, non-members and non-science journalists, in the UK and abroad. It will also consult with the professions on the other side of the embargo line: the journal publishers and press officers. This is essential as science journalists do not, after all, control the embargo system and any improvements will require the active agreement and participation of those operating it.
The party's final report is due on 1 October 2009, including recommendations for improving the current arrangements for embargoes. This will be made available to ABSW members.
With a wide variety of views about embargoes among ABSW members and other science journalists, it seems unlikely that a consensus will be reached on all aspects of the subject. Nevertheless, the Executive Committee is hopeful that the working party will be able to shed light on the embargoes process and lead to improvements that benefit the parties on both sides of the fence.
Mun-Keat Looi
News Editor
ABSW
The objectives of the working party are: to examine the current use of embargoes that affect science journalists in the UK; to identify strengths and weaknesses in their operation and application; and to bring about improvements where necessary and possible, taking into account the best interests of ABSW members, science journalists in general, and the public interest. There will be eight members in the working party (yet to be appointed), including a secretary, and it will be chaired by ITN's Lawrence McGinty.
Practices both in and outside of the UK will be considered, as embargoes operate beyond national borders. The working party will collect evidence, information and views from ABSW members, non-members and non-science journalists, in the UK and abroad. It will also consult with the professions on the other side of the embargo line: the journal publishers and press officers. This is essential as science journalists do not, after all, control the embargo system and any improvements will require the active agreement and participation of those operating it.
The party's final report is due on 1 October 2009, including recommendations for improving the current arrangements for embargoes. This will be made available to ABSW members.
With a wide variety of views about embargoes among ABSW members and other science journalists, it seems unlikely that a consensus will be reached on all aspects of the subject. Nevertheless, the Executive Committee is hopeful that the working party will be able to shed light on the embargoes process and lead to improvements that benefit the parties on both sides of the fence.
Mun-Keat Looi
News Editor
ABSW
Saturday, 25 April 2009
ABSW: Website is getting a facelift
New and exciting changes are afoot for our online presence.
The ABSW website is in the process of being redesigned having looked pretty much the same for a number of years. But it’s not just the look of the site that getting an overhaul though – the content is too. The committee hopes that the process will give the site a new lease of life, encouraging more members to use it whilst also providing them with more useful functions.
Some of the new things we’re planning are:
We’ll also be incorporating both ABSW blogs (the main blog and The Science Reporter blog) into the site. In fact, we’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about how we can make the ABSW’s web presence more integrated overall so, for example, we can have more signposts to things like the ABSW-L Google Group (which, if you use it at all, I suspect most of you use more like a mailing list rather than a forum).
Given that the current site is written and maintained by Michael Kenward in his spare time, it’s amazing it’s kept as up to date as it is. Of course, we have to be a little careful that we don’t create an all-singing, all-dancing website that is too time-consuming and difficult to maintain. To that end, we’ll be implementing a content management system allowing multiple people with little or no coding knowledge can log in and take responsibility for a certain section of the site.
So when will it be finished I hear you cry? Well, the first iteration should be released onto a now suspecting public within the next month or so. After that, the set up of the site should enable us to make small improvements over time, so that the website remains up-to-date, in terms of both look and content (this is actually the way Amazon handle their site: constant small upgrades rather than a complete redesign).
So, the real answer to the question is the website will NEVER be ready. Which is why your comments and suggestions will always be welcome. You can email me at webm...@absw.org.uk
Mike Nagle
The ABSW website is in the process of being redesigned having looked pretty much the same for a number of years. But it’s not just the look of the site that getting an overhaul though – the content is too. The committee hopes that the process will give the site a new lease of life, encouraging more members to use it whilst also providing them with more useful functions.
Some of the new things we’re planning are:
- wiki’s on all things science writing so that our members can share their expertise with each other;
- an updated member’s directory;
- a dedicated jobs section, and;
- a member’s only area.
We’ll also be incorporating both ABSW blogs (the main blog and The Science Reporter blog) into the site. In fact, we’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about how we can make the ABSW’s web presence more integrated overall so, for example, we can have more signposts to things like the ABSW-L Google Group (which, if you use it at all, I suspect most of you use more like a mailing list rather than a forum).
Given that the current site is written and maintained by Michael Kenward in his spare time, it’s amazing it’s kept as up to date as it is. Of course, we have to be a little careful that we don’t create an all-singing, all-dancing website that is too time-consuming and difficult to maintain. To that end, we’ll be implementing a content management system allowing multiple people with little or no coding knowledge can log in and take responsibility for a certain section of the site.
So when will it be finished I hear you cry? Well, the first iteration should be released onto a now suspecting public within the next month or so. After that, the set up of the site should enable us to make small improvements over time, so that the website remains up-to-date, in terms of both look and content (this is actually the way Amazon handle their site: constant small upgrades rather than a complete redesign).
So, the real answer to the question is the website will NEVER be ready. Which is why your comments and suggestions will always be welcome. You can email me at webm...@absw.org.uk
Mike Nagle
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
ABSW: Society events at the WCSJ
The committee is currently working on two events for the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) designed specifically for ABSW members (though technically speaking the entire WCSJ is an ABSW event!).
The first event is an ABSW Science Book Sale, which will run in a basement during the conference. Leftover review books have been donated by Nature's Phil Campbell, New Scientist's Jeremy Webb, and The Economist's Fiametta Rocco. Fifty of these books will be given away free to WCSJ participants from developing countries attending the conference on scholarship (they'll also be able to buy science books at a reduced rate). The remainder will be sold off to raise money to help republish the ABSW career guide So You Want To Be a Science Writer?. We need volunteers to support the book sale by helping to collect and deliver the books (anyone with a car in Central London?), and to help man the sales desk during the lunch breaks (an honesty box system will be in place at all other times). Please contact me if you are able to help.
In the second event, Anna Lewcock and I are working on a 'Lunch for Authors and Editors' at 1pm on Wednesday 1st July. They hope to bring together some of the figures in popular science book publishing, be they agents, editors, or buyers. Speakers include popular science writer John Gribbin. The idea is to give a small window into the world of writing and publishing a popular science book, and give everyone the opportunity to ask questions and network. If you have any suggestions for speakers, or wish to be involved in some way, please contact me or Anna Lewcock. The event will be free but lunch is not. Please check closer to the time whether you need to bring lunch with you.
Finally, the ABSW award for Best Newcomer in Science Journalism will be presented to the winner at a gala reception at the WCSJ. Further information, and a form for entry, can be found online.
Natasha Loder
ABSW Committee
The first event is an ABSW Science Book Sale, which will run in a basement during the conference. Leftover review books have been donated by Nature's Phil Campbell, New Scientist's Jeremy Webb, and The Economist's Fiametta Rocco. Fifty of these books will be given away free to WCSJ participants from developing countries attending the conference on scholarship (they'll also be able to buy science books at a reduced rate). The remainder will be sold off to raise money to help republish the ABSW career guide So You Want To Be a Science Writer?. We need volunteers to support the book sale by helping to collect and deliver the books (anyone with a car in Central London?), and to help man the sales desk during the lunch breaks (an honesty box system will be in place at all other times). Please contact me if you are able to help.
In the second event, Anna Lewcock and I are working on a 'Lunch for Authors and Editors' at 1pm on Wednesday 1st July. They hope to bring together some of the figures in popular science book publishing, be they agents, editors, or buyers. Speakers include popular science writer John Gribbin. The idea is to give a small window into the world of writing and publishing a popular science book, and give everyone the opportunity to ask questions and network. If you have any suggestions for speakers, or wish to be involved in some way, please contact me or Anna Lewcock. The event will be free but lunch is not. Please check closer to the time whether you need to bring lunch with you.
Finally, the ABSW award for Best Newcomer in Science Journalism will be presented to the winner at a gala reception at the WCSJ. Further information, and a form for entry, can be found online.
Natasha Loder
ABSW Committee
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Shibboleth
Ted Nield ventures up “Doris’s crack” and finds out about what sets the scientific sensibility apart...
You’ve got to hand it to Doris Salcedo, of the now world-famous Tate Modern crack. It's not just art with an edge – it’s art with two edges. And if art these days is supposed to be dangerous, then this piece certainly is. Several members of the public – people who had presumably gone there expressly to see the thing – have already fallen into it.
What’s Shibboleth about? It’s all in the title, the word deriving from the practice of the people of Gilead, east of the River Jordan, who according to the Old Testament used that word to root out their sworn enemies Ephraimites (one of the 12 tribes of Israel) as they tried to cross the Jordan. Ephraimites, unable to say “sh”, gave themselves away immediately. Doris’s crack is all about racism, and all intolerance that engenders division.
So much for the art bit.
The widening crack starts as a hairline fracture under a dustbin near the entrance. It then gradually becomes a stiletto-snapper, forks like lightning, vanishes under walls, and finally widens into a chasm large enough to swallow any unsupervised child with no sense of personal danger, revealing what seems to be fence-wire embedded in its walls – recalling the great symbolic boundaries of our time – the Berlin Wall, Guantanamo Bay, the compound in Ardman Animation’s Chicken Run, and so forth. Shibboleth stretches the 167 metre length of the Hall and, at its most Grand Canyon-like, is about 30 centimetres wide and a metre deep.
What strikes me about this piece is how people’s reactions to it have divided the artists from the public. While the artist witters on about her profound meaning, most of the visitors are more interested in how it was done. On this, Doris herself and the Tate, have remained silent – fearing no doubt that mundane concern with technique (something conceptual artists usually scorn, for obvious reasons) will crowd out questions about “meaning” and the artist's intentions. Compared to these supposed profundities, concern about how the trick was pulled is merely technical - leading only to proximal rather than ultimate causes. Philosophically such reasons hardly seem grand enough. Nevertheless, this work has stimulated the question “how” like few others.
This must be encouraging because “how” is the scientist’s question. Geologists and engineers spend a lot of time staring up cracks because they tell them a lot. Is this metal casting about to break? Is this building about to drop on my head? Is this continent about to rift from its neighbour? Answers to all these interesting and useful questions can all be found in the humble crack. Scientists ask the question “how” because it leads them to understanding something about the way Nature works. How do mountains rise? How do faults move? How can a crack appear in the floor, widen at the speed your toenails grow, and become the Atlantic Ocean? Science can’t tell you why any of this happens, but it can tell you how. And this is useful knowledge – we cannot say why the HIV virus exists, and it is pointless asking. But we can find out how.
So for my money, the question “how” is exactly the one we should be encouraging the public to ask. The search for ultimate causes leads us only into the barren wastes of a philosophical Gilead - the supernatural – exactly what divides more people in the world from their neighbours than anything else. If we could but unite behind the question “how”, the reign of the shibboleth is over.
- (Incidentally, spies at Tate Modern have revealed that the plastic moulds for the crack's sides were flown in to the UK from the artist's home. Visitors were then prevented from viewing the Turbine Hall by sheets of paper covering the windows that overlook it as an excavator dug a long, deep trench. The sculpted plastic moulds of the final crack's visible walls were then lowered into the trench, and liquid concrete that matched the floor skim perfectly was poured in. The visible moulded walls of the wider parts of the work, where the chicken-wire can be seen, were then painted to increase their verisimilitude. TN)
Thursday, 20 September 2007
New members 2007 June
Full
Stephanie Tania Burchell holds an astrophysics degree from Harvard and is a former NASA press and media liaison officer. She now writes for the National Space Centre in Leicester.
Jasmine Farsarakis studied natural sciences at the University of East Anglia and is a freelance writer and editor specialising in medicine, health and biological sciences. She is currently Associate Editor of Nature Clinical Practice Rheumatology
Philippa Pigache is a freelance feature writer with 30 years' experience, having written for women's magazines, the Sunday Times, Daily Mail and The Guardian – as well as ITN and BBC. She has also published four acclaimed consumer health books.
James Taylor works for Medwire News and studied the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial and spent three years as an advertising copywriter. Currently writing news, he wants to branch out into feature writing in the fields of pharmaceuticals and genetics.
Richard van Noorden is Science Correspondent at Chemistry World. He has also written for Nature, Bluesci and RSC News and lists stand-up comedy among his many interests.
Patrick Walter has a biochemistry degree and has a year's experience wirting for Chemistry & Industry writing on science topics across a wide spectrum.
Associate
Tammy Boyce is the coordinator of the Science Communication MA at the Cardiff University School of Journalism.
Student
Emily Baldwin is the editor of Prime Space, a quarterly publication of the Society for Popular Astronomy and contributes to Popular Astronomy magazine and Geoscientist. She is currently finishing a PhD in planetary science at UCL.
Joanna Katharine Hicks Carpenter holds a doctorate in chemistry and has worked as a civil servant, and editorial assistant, and a TEFL teacher. She is now studying the MSc at Imperial and is wondering how to earn a living at the end of it.
Ruth Knowles is an Imperial College London graduate, currently studying the MSc in Science Communication part-time at the University of the West of England. She is hoping to launch a career as a science writer.
Leandro Librio is a physicist and nanotechnologist now studying for the Birkbeck Diploma in Science Communication.
Victoria West is a freelance science writer and broadcaster specialising in environment and conservation.
Saturday, 28 July 2007
The ABSW and its African twin
The twinning arrangement between the ABSW and its Ugandan equivalent is beginning to take shape, says Lionel MilgromI was asked to represent the ABSW as twinning monitor with the Ugandan Science Journalists’ Association (USJA) at the 5th WFSJ Conference held in Melbourne this year. I met William Odinga Balikuddembe, my Ugandan counterpart, several timea and, quite simply, we got on famously.Although he is only 28, I found William bright, intelligent, insightful, and totally switched onto the problems of living and working in Uganda and the region: a very wise head on such young shoulders.
During one of these meetings, I conducted a more formal interview. This report outlines my findings and offers some suggestions for how this twinning arrangement might continue into the future.
The USJA is still a young “organisation of friends” with no formal constitution. It has 27 members, including scientists as well as science journalists. Meetings and events consist largely of training sessions in science reporting and provision of a forum for scientists and journalists to meet and exchange ideas. Members fund this activity out of the own pockets.
The USJA will at some stage go for NGO status so it can apply for government grants in Uganda. Under Ugandan law that means having a member of the Internal Security Agency sitting on the governing board (commissar?). Although this law is in place in Uganda, it has yet to be properly implemented, according to William. Still, it does raise some interesting questions about the existence or otherwise of a free press, and possible limitations on the freedom of speech/action of USJA members.
Scientific activity in Uganda is quite broad according to William. It revolves around the environment, resource-management, health, and IT.
The four main state universities are Makarere (the biggest) and Kyambogo in Kampala, then Mbarara science university in the western part of the country, and Gulu University of Agriculture in the north. There are other private universities in Uganda. Science stories typically might be about:
- Sustainability of fish stocks in Lake Victoria: Uganda has the lion’s share of this vast inland fresh-water lake, but poaching by fishermen from neighbouring countries increasingly pose problems.
- Effects of falling water levels: Lake Victoria is also the source of the river Nile, so falling water levels (from excessive use or draught) impacts directly on water usage in the countries downstream (e.g., Sudan and Egypt). Thus Uganda and its environment might be seen as a microcosm of the global effects of local environmental problems. “We either live together or die together: it’s that simple”, says William; a fairly obvious but nevertheless compelling sentiment especially when expressed by someone better placed to comment on certain of life’s realities than most of us experience here.
- Retroviral AIDS drugs: These certainly are extending the life-span of those suffering with the disease, but in so doing leads to its further spread; as does US (Neocon/religious-Right-influenced) funding policies that currently encourage the Uganda population to forgo condoms in favour of sexual abstinence.
- AIDS research: In Uganda, as in other African countries, this includes active programmes looking into the development of cheaper approaches based on herbal medicine, to controlling the disease.
What could the ABSW provide the USJA? Essentially, experience and professionalism, especially now that the WFSJ has published Barbie’s new blockbuster "How to Run a Science Journalists’ Association". (The book rightly earning rave reviews at the Melbourne conference.) Advice on the USJA’s draft constitution might be provided by both the ABSW and the USJA. The ABSW might also like to consider the acquisition/provision of bursaries for visiting USJA science journalists, for example, for workshops and conferences over here, especially the 2008 BA festival, and the 2009 6th WFSJ Conference to be held in London; and perhaps help with internships for USJA members.
It was also suggested that when the USJA sets up a proper website, then we could ensure it is linked to the ABSW and EUSJA web-sites. A piece on William for The Science Reporter would not go amiss. We could also regularly send the USJA our Science Reporter and minutes of ABSW Board meetings to the USJA (and vice versa). Perhaps a regular column from a USJA member might be included in The Science Reporter?
Any other ideas, or offers to help with those already on the table, to me please.
Lionel Milgrom
Ugandan Representative: William Odinga Balikuddembe; acting chair of the nascent USJA, usjamedia@hotmail.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
