Reportr.net

I’m at the Future of Science Journalism symposium this week, organised for the 25th anniversary of the Knight science fellowships at MIT.

On the agenda is a discussion about the prospects for science journalism in a multimedia age and I’ll be talking about multiplatform working on Wednesday.

But the event was kicked off by Boyce Rensberger, director of the fellowships programme, looking back at the historical relationship between science and journalism.

Hearing about the early days of science journalism, it is remarkable how it has developed from the gee-whizz, uncritical reporting of discoveries to a more analytical approach.

Boyce recalled that the National Association of Science Writers, set up in the 1930s in the US, operated somewhat like a cult. For example, one proposal floated at the time was that only NASW members should be able to write about science. From the start, science writers behaved as if they were different from other journalists.

This sounds laughable and antiquated now, but it reflects the early approach to science, when journalists were naive about the promise of science and acted like cheerleaders of science.

The change came along in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when science journalists started questioning whether, as Boyce put it, they should be the lap dogs or the watch dogs of science.

This period marked the transition of science journalists from being journalists first and foremost. Boyce recalled that this was also the golden age of science reporting, with many newspapers launching dedicated science sections or pages.

“It’s all been downhill since then,” joked Boyce to some nervous laughter. No one will disagree that the golden age of science journalism is over.

Looking briefly to the next 25 years, Boyce noted that the profession will be very different to what it is now, just like current science journalism is very different to the early days of science writing.

In a future where scientists can take their work directly to the public, added Boyce, “I’d like to think there will always be a role for professionally-edited media.”