CASW fellows cover ScienceWriters2024: Read their stories
Latino immigrant workers with H-2A visas harvest celery crops in Nevada, a state home to two of the fastest-warming cities in the United States: Reno and Las Vegas. Multiple sessions at ScienceWriters2024 addressed the plight of outdoor workers on a hotter planet. (Drone photo by Vanesa de la Cruz Pavas)
Among the audiences at the November ScienceWriters2024 meeting in Raleigh, N.C., were 17 CASW-supported reporters diligently taking notes and conducting interviews to inform coverage of the 62nd annual New Horizons in Science briefings and the 12th annual Patrusky Lecture. This year, fellows also had the opportunity to report on a special preconference workshop, “Living and working on a hot planet: Reporting on climate change and human health,” which CASW held with support from a grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
Their stories—on scientific topics spanning climate change, health, dark matter, and more—comprise the 2024 New Horizons Newsroom.
Ten of the writers were science graduate students participating in the annual ComSciCon-SciWri workshop, which provides early-career scientists an opportunity to attend the conference and learn about science journalism in a hands-on way. Each fellow is paired with a mentor and assigned a briefing to cover as a beat journalist would. This year’s mentors were Jenny Curtaro, Laura Dattaro, Richard Harris, Alla Katsnelson, Joe Palca, Marlowe Starling, Kristen Sanford, Josh Sokol, Bijal Trivedi, and Tom Ulrich. The program was generously supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
This year, the workshop received additional support from AAAS EurekAlert!, which provided funding to enable the participation of three students from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Their stories will be additionally published in the EurekAlert Features Portal.
Each published piece went through an editorial process designed to give fellows a taste of working in a newsroom, including peer review within the workshop group.
Seven New Horizons travel fellows—journalists selected to receive travel funds to attend the conference—filled out the group.
All stories received at least two rounds of editing and fact-checking, supervised by CASW Executive Director Meaghan Parker. The editing team also included Dattaro, Rosalind Reid, and Kate Travis.
Read their stories:
- “Yet We Rise”: Joseph L. Graves Jr. argues justice for HBCUs could transform science
- For Joseph L. Graves Jr., a lifetime of fighting social injustice
- Researchers strive to ease gold mining’s toll on the Amazon
- What can U.S. farmers teach scientists about reforesting the Peruvian Amazon?
- Protecting workers from extreme heat
- Extreme heat: Who is most vulnerable?
- Combating the health impacts of extreme heat
- Exercise may manage blood pressure through the gut microbiome
- A translator for the universe
- Hitoshi Murayama lights path forward for dark matter research
- Science journalism’s role in a polarized post-election America
- What will a second Trump term mean for cleantech and climate mitigation markets?
- Local reporting on health effects essential for climate journalism
Additional coverage of ScienceWriters2024 sessions can be found at the website of the National Association of Science Writers.
