ABSW: Journalism 2.0 workshop

This year's ABSW events kicked off with a workshop on how next generation web tools are helping today's journalists.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a total technophobe, but for a while I thought that RSS was something you got from too much typing. Hashtags sounded like an embarrassing medical condition. And if I had experience with a search engine then I was pretty sure it had stalled. Permanently.

Thank the gods of technology then for the ABSW’s Journalism 2.0 workshop, led by our very own Mike Nagle.

On a warm May evening, a dozen or so ABSW members met at the the Wellcome Trust building in London armed with just a laptop and a thirst for information. The interesting and practical session covered a number of online tools and websites that I think could benefit most of us, both in a professional capacity and in stalking ex-partners our social lives too.

First, I was disabused of my thoughts about RSS (it is, as I’m sure you all know, a handy way to keep track of the content of many different websites without having to visit each individually).

Next, a discussion about Twitter covered ground familiar to anyone who subscribes to the ABSW-L and quickly divided the room into Twitter evangelists (or 'Twevangelists' - depressingly, this term does appear to exist in cyberspace) and those who had no experience (or no desire to have any experience) of the micro-blogging site. The site consists of users’ messages (or 'Tweets'), which are restricted to 140 characters. Hashtags are essentially keywords that are preceded by the hash symbol, a handy way for users to search content containing particular words or phrases. You can follow the ABSW’s Twitter feed here.

Love it, loathe it, or never heard of it, Twitter is an interesting example of an emerging social networking tool. Whether it’s an exciting way of searching up-to-the-second events and news across the world or an online navel-gazing forum remains undecided (but tweet me @christinagiles and let me know). A plug too for Facebook and LinkedIn - the ABSW has groups on both these social networking sites as well.

Every journalist’s best friend (alright, second after Wikipedia), Google, was discussed. Mike shared some cunning search tips, such as using the command ‘define:’ before a term to find definitions of it on the web. Also, adding ‘filetype:pdf’ after a search term will return results that are pdfs only (change the suffix to restrict your results to other file types). A quick Google has dug up this useful-looking list of Google commands.

We were reminded that Google is not the only search engine in the world (although it may be the only one that has become a verb). Microsoft’s rebranded and updated search engine Bing may also be worth a click.

Other gems covered at the workshop included www.archive.org, which is an astounding site full of old versions of websites - brilliant if you’re pretending it’s still 1995, or if you’re after something that has been taken down from a particular website.

It was a fascinating session, thanks again to Mike Nagle for his efforts.

Chrissie Giles
Regional Groups Coordinator
ABSW

COLUMN: ABSW-L Buzz

DIUS, peer-reviewed press releases, psychics and Twitter. All the latest natter on ABSW-L.

The DIUS is no more! Long live the DBIS! Yes, the short-lived DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) has been merged with the BERR (Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) to form the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. No-one is quite sure what the change will mean, or how many more acronyms we may have to remember in the near future. As Jon Turney wrote on ABSW-L, "DIUS, we hardly knew you (I'm still not even sure how to say it)."

Back in the real world, Mike Kenward heard a rumour that Eurekalert is changing its policy, blocking press releases that are not based on peer reviewed research. Could this really be true, he asked, and do you really want someone to weed out material that has not been through the process.

Kat Arney wondered whether such a change would affect the flurry of stories that come from conference abstracts over the summer. "I'm often asked for comments on cancer-related ones, but often all I have to go on is an abstract and a press release, neither of which usually provides a fantastic amount of scientific detail."

"There is outstanding research out there being presented at meetings and fair play to the journalists who snap up those stories," said Celia Kozlowski, "and there is also some utter crap being published in peer-reviewed journals - some of which is touted on Eurekalert."

Justine Davies agreed, "There is an awful lot of good research that doesn't appear in peer-reviewed publications because of pressures on space." She hoped that any discerning journalist would take into account the credibility of the researcher and have enough knowledge of the field to know whether the research deserves an airing. "A decent journo would surely also ask for an opinion of someone else in the field before writing a story?," she wrote.

As Celia put it, "Whatever Eurekalert does, it ultimately comes down to the science writer to sort the gems from the dross."

That reminds me of a press release Mike Kenward received, describing how "More and More Business Owners are turning to Psychics". It was not (unfortunately) as Ed Yong first read it, "Business owners turning to Physics", but marketing for Russel Grant's carefully selected team of Mediums. "Using psychics and mediums for business use is not unusual, in fact they are usually employed to suss out prospective employees, solve mysteries within the workplace or indeed work hand in hand with astrologers and Financial Directors to plot the business moving forward," it declared, to the amusement of Diane Stillwell and others.

Brian Owens received the PR too. "It didn't go into my junk mail folder, so obviously Apple thinks there's something in it. Maybe that's how they knew the iPhone would be such a success?"

Elsewhere on ABSW-L, Pete Wrobel highlighted a fascinating statistic from The Times: "The overall risk of having a crash falls by five per cent for every one mph reduction in speed." They didn't say what happens if you reduce speed by 21mph. This reminded Bernard Dixon of something he heard on a US radio station, "The announcer said there was a 50 per cent chance of rain on Saturday and a 50 per cent chance of rain on Sunday, so rain was certain (100 per cent) over the weekend." That would certainly explain the weather during barbeque season.

Finally, list members were once again atwitter about Twitter. There was much bemusement at the Telegraph's huge fail with Twitterfall, which once again prompted the question: "What the hell is Twitter?". I won't bore you with yet another Twitter discussion (for helpful links, explanations and examples read the threads here and here, but as Ed Yong put it: "Future of journalism or time-wasting narcissism depending on who you ask."

Mun-Keat Looi
News Editor
The Science Reporter