At the ScienceOnline 2010 conference next month, I'm going to be on a panel about "Rebooting Science Journaiism," in which I'll join Carl Zimmer, Ed Yong, and John Timmer in pondering the future of science journalism. God knows what will come of it, as none of us have the sure answers. But that session, as well as the entanglement of my own future with that of science journalism, has me focused on the subject. And two recent online discussions about it have piqued my interest.
One was the reaction, on a science writer's email-list I'm on, to a recent Poynter interview with Times science writer Natalie Angier, in which she said
It's basically going out of existence.
I can't quote directly from the email list, since it's a closed forum and meant to be private. But suffice to say this interview created a bit of stir there and elsewhere among science writers. Some seemed to feel that if so well-placed a colleague as Angier was feeling the heat (as well she might, given the layoffs recently at the Times), then things were bad indeed. A couple wondered if this was news to her, and if so, where she'd been the last ten years or so. (The answer: Busy writing to good effect and pay.) The most common reaction was to lament the layoffs and disappearance of science coverage in so many daily newspapers and elsewhere.
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