Next week, I'll be chairing a session at the Science Online 2010 conference called Rebooting science journalism in the age of the web. I'll be shooting the breeze with Carl Zimmer, John Timmer and David Dobbs about the transition of journalism from sheets of plant pulp to wires and wi-fi. The title of the talk had been set before the panel was assembled but, being biologists at heart, we're going to shift the metaphor from a technological one to an evolutionary one.
As a species, science journalists (in all their varied forms and behaviours) have found themselves thrust into a new digital ecosystem that presents fresh challenges to their survival. Some individuals will have adaptive traits that allow them to thrive in this brave, new world, while others are riddled with maladaptive qualities and face extinction. In this post (and hopefully, during the session), we'll consider what the new ecosystem looks like, what opportunities and threats it presents, and how journalists can adapt to survive in it. Let's start with opportunities (I'm bucking the trend by starting a blog post about science journalism on a positive note).
New niches to exploit
Thanks to new media, everyone with a computer and a connection has the ability to write about science or to comment on what others have written. The ability to produce content has been thrust into the hands of a broad range of people who are keen to talk about science to a mass audience. It's a Cambrian-style explosion in the practice of journalism.
