Chris will have more on our morning conversation with Tom Bowman about communicating science, but in the mean time I’ll touch on the afternoon discussion with Mark Dowie and K.C. Cole on science journalism.
Both Mark and K.C. are award winning journalists and authors. Mark’s most recent book is Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples and teaches science and foreign correspondence at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journal. K.C. teaches journalism and communication at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism and her latest book is entitled Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up. Each expert shared their career experiences and offered advice on speaking with journalists. They weighed in on why science reporting matters and how it’s changing. Mark focused on the state of the media and K.C. shared her perspective on how a journalist collects information to tell the story. In the end we discussed what styles of communication are most sucessful in America. (The comic after the jump is a great interpretation by Jorge Cham).
It was a terrific afternoon and our speakers raised a lot of thought-provoking points, followed by a round table Q&A. Chris and I are very interested to read reactions from students who were in the room and find out what resonated most for them…
