Date: May 9, 2011
Title: What is the Future of Paid Science Journalism?
Podcaster: Dr. Alex “Sandy” Antunes
Organization: Project Calliope LLC – http://projectcalliope.com
Description: “A podcaster, an editor, a policy wonk and a NASA engineer walk into a bar…” Sandy from projectCalliope does a one-question ambush interview with 4 disparate science writers at the DCSWA workshop to get their answer to the future of paid science writing.
Bio: Dr. Sandy is launching a personal science/music satellite at projectCalliope.com and writes twice/weekly at Science
2.0.
Sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Adrian Tillich and dedicated to Dr. Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain who inspired me to go back to university and study science.
Transcript:
[Sandy] Once again I’m on a train, I’m about to do an anthropological study of a possibly threatened species, the Scientific Journalist. Blending in, as if I were one of them, this is Dr. Sandy Antunes, the Daytime Astronomer, on 365 days of astronomy
[Sandy] So I’m here with Rob Frederick.
[Rob] I’m the podcaster of Science Magazine.
[Sandy] What do you think is the future of paid scientific journalism?
[Rob] I don’t know what. But my hope is, what’s going to happen is we’re all going to become people who can essentially do everything. We can all do multimedia, we can all do blogs, we can all do website design, we can all do writing, and that we can all do podcasting too.
[Rob] And that the future really will be, for paid, that people or companies or organizations hiring us because we have a beat, and we’re known for our beat, and we’re known for being able to produce whatever it is we produce as a beat reporter.
[Rob] So if I’m the person who covers space science, for example, then you come to me and you can get a video, and you can get a podcast, you can get a blog, and you can even get a website design. And I think that is how we will identify ourselves– by our beat and by being able to do everything all at once.
[Rob] To your question, at some point we will tire, I believe, of all this fast tweeting, twittering, posting and 140 character or less kind of science reporting that’s being done– the fast food of science reporting. And we will start to look for more in-depth analysis pieces. And we’ll still want to be, in a sense, entertained. And if one person can do all of that, on a topic in which he or she really knows it well and knows the players, that person would be, I think, in the best position to be able to command of an institution, of a journal, of a newspaper, of whatever the future of media will be, a salary or some sort of nice fee for that work.
[Sandy] Next we come to Melissa Bodeau, who works with NASA.
[Melissa] It’s very hard to move beyond what somebody called the ‘interested curious’, into the everyday person. I know I’ve run into that challenge working with NASA and working with private firms on space events. There are a lot of people who believe in it or don’t believe in it. And they cannot be convinced by spinoffs or benefits or education or technology, it’s about the paycheck and how their daily lives are affected.
[Melissa] And I think the more people start to see how their daily lives are affected, as technology grows and develops and we become more dependent on it, based on our choices in the past, people will have to understand to be able to make decisions about who they elect, what they fund, and how they want the world to work in the future.
[Melissa] It’s getting to the point where having a basic sense of scientific literacy, and cause and effect, and potential risks and impacts matters in every decision that’s getting made, and people don’t understand that _enough_ to be able to make the decisions that will shape the future the way they’re going to want it to turn out.
[Melissa] People are going to get surprised a few times, and then they’re going to start to look for more information. And I think that’s where scientific journalism, science writing is really going to start to be in demand. There’s not anything that happens that you look at that doesn’t have some basis, some effect in something to do with science. Whether it’s psychology, behavioral science, physics, environmental things, cars, there’s all science there. All you have to do is hook people into it properly to get them to understand.
[Sandy] Well, thank you!
[Melissa] You’re welcome!
[Sandy] I’m with Jeff Foust, and he’s with…
[Jeff] I run a website called The Space Review, which is a weekly publication of space news and commentary. I think we’re in a really dynamic time right now, because we’re seeing a lot of structures of the old mainstream media breaking down because of the influence of the Internet. At the same time, we’re sort of building an airplane in mid air, in terms of what the new model is going to be, in that who is going to pay, how much are they going to pay.
[Jeff] One of the things about the Internet is that there are much lower barriers to entry, in that anyone can become an online science writer. The question is, can you make a living doing so. If you’re providing a service in terms of science writing, in terms of providing insights that people can’t find elsewhere, providing things that they can use in their daily lives, you’re going to find value. Whether that’s through advertising and sponsorships, or through a paid subscription model, or through alternative sources.
[Jeff] You know, new forms of journalism– like Kindle singles, these new sort of mini books that you can download in your Amazon. That instead of writing a full-fledged book and spending years doing it, you can write a 20,000 page… a 20,000 word, rather, treatise in a few months, and sell them online for 3 or 5 dollars– and perhaps make money than you would with an ordinary book.
[Jeff] So there are some new models coming out. It’s very clear that the future is going to be much different from the past, but I still think that there is going to be a lot of people looking for value out there. Particularly as voices become more crowded and more noisy, there are more and more voices out there speaking, having a guide being able to say “this is a particularly insightful article” or a particularly good blog post. Finding the subject, this concept called ‘curation’ that you hear a lot about in the media– but it’s the idea of being able to bring together these all, identifying what’s the best out there, bringing together, is something else that brings value, on top of actually doing the writing itself.
[Jeff] I think you’re going to see more of that in the future, simply because there’s so much out there. It’s so difficult for a single person to find out what’s the best, what’s the most important out there. This is something that, you know, finding the sources but also providing the insight. “why is this important”, “what are they saying here that you can’t find elsewhere”, “what does this really mean”? It’s sort of a hybrid of editor and journalist and aggregator, in some respects, trying to find the best and bringing it all together.
[Sandy] All right, excellent, thank you!
[Jeff] Alright!
[Sarah] Hi, I’m Sarah Zielinkski, I’m an editor at Smithonian Magazine. I think that there will always be a need for people who can translate serious science for a public that doesn’t quite understand it but is interested in it. And I think that, therefore, there will always be people who can be paid for this. You want people who do it well, and if you do something well, that should be paid for
[Sandy] Do you see science as more of an entertainment thing to be enjoyed, then, like we are not educating but we are informing in an entertaining way?
[Sarah] I think that, at least in science journalism, there is a bit of both. There’s an entertainment factor as well as an education factor, and they’re both equally important. Because some people do want to be educated and others want to be entertained, and at least for me I really try to get both of those groups.
[Sandy] Okay, well, most people couldn’t succeed but you’re an award winner with apparently a really awesome piece I have to look up, so thank you very much for your time!
[Sarah] (laughs) You’re welcome!
[Sandy] And we’re back to me, Dr. Sandy Antunes, host of this podcast. What do I think is the future of paid science writing? This is a time of change, some of which don’t make sense. As if somehow moving to a more efficient printing press is a reason not to pay writers? I think we’re in a dip where paid writing is considered, because right now people think free and ubiquitous is good. But I think that we will come out of this dip with a realization that it is ultimately unsatisfying. That we need some higher end content, something with a bit more time spent in researching, something with a bit more depth– the kind of depth that takes time. And that time means money so that the writer can eat while they’re producing their work. I’m not saying paid science writing is only going to come from paid professionals, I’m saying that good writing will have to be paid, in the end.
[Sandy] I’m also trying an experiment on paid writing over at projectCalliope.com, I hope you visit me there! And I’ll see you again at 365DaysofAstronomy.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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