Puzzle number one: In the front section of this morning’s New York Times, Gina Kolata has a follow-up piece (yes, another one) on the mammography question. The first two-thirds of the 1,400-word story detail how the panel that made the recommendations enlisted Dr. Heidi D. Nelson of the Oregon Health and Sciences University to review the existing literature on breast cancer screening.

Here’s the puzzle: Very little in this section is attributed. Nelson isn’t quoted, nor is anyone else from Oregon. And there is no indication where or how Kolata got this information.

Yet, oddly, the story is accompanied by a picture of Nelson (above). Here’s my guess: Nelson agreed to tell Kolata the story only on condition she not be quoted. Fair enough, if that’s what happened. Whatever the story, Kolata should have explained where she got the information. That’s standard practice in our business, isn’t it?

Puzzle number two: It’s a variation of something recently discussed on the National Association of Science Writers’ listserv. Can one be a science writer without having some expertise in science? Or, in the case of the NASW discussion, calculus?

I’m late catching up with Steven Pinker’s review of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book in the Nov. 15 New York Times Sunday Book Review. I’m not interested here in the content of the review, but rather this assertion of Pinker’s: “…when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse, or flat wrong.”

I’ve made a career out of interviewing experts, as many of us have. Where does that leave us? Banal, obtuse, or flat wrong?

- Paul Raeburn

The Tracker recently got access to the newsletters that Energy and Environment Publishing sends out to subscribers in return for a hefty price. Most of them contain serious journalism, heavily reported, and within a business model that will never work for true mass media (see “hefty price”). But they offer  encouraging evidence that the internet is not always fatal to old line publishers who cannot survive without profit. (And one of its writers, Lisa Friedman, is winner of the on line category among this year’s AAAS Kavli science journalism awards)

Today one of those newsletters, ClimateWire, has an intriguing write up by staffer Annie Jia. She went to a meeting underway in Washington DC: the 3rd Annual Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference. Her hed: People are irrational about climate, but teachable.  I can’t link to the whole thing, but will update this post if I can get an open link sprung for me by the publisher. (*UPDATE, we got it, the previous headline link should take you to Jia’s story. ) It’s a well done report with insights useful for understanding why the hell so many people are too dumb to see that anthropogenic climate change is real and a crisis, and others are too dumb to see it’s either a fraud or too far down the priority list to matter.

However, it led me to look for any other coverage of the meeting. I found just one, a blog, well-crafted, with its own twist on the meeting’s news. It’s at theenergycollective website, by Marc Gunther: What’s for lunch? Behavioral economics meets climate change. He refers to one narrow aspect of the meeting, and will, so to speak, presumably be reporting in further posts on the meat of the meeting. But this one is about meat, the kind one eats, and the irrational but predictable ways that diners’ choices of meaty or vegetarian lunches can be manipulated. It’s all about choice, and about the perverse ways we make them.

And what a wandering trail led to this post!

Grist for the Mill: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy Behavior, Energy & Climate Change Conference.

- Charlie Petit

Every Friday one learns from Tabitha M. Powledge, aka to one and all as Tammy, she will endeavour to file at the site of the US’s  National Association of Science Writers a blog on Science Blogs, on science reporting, and on other  related things, starting today and here it is.

Tammy knows the business. It is good, and humbling to see so many excellent material and insights she has gathered into one place and that you won’t have seen here at ksjtracker central.  She reports, for those of us with news readers, that she hasn’t yet gotten an rss feed for it. So remember to check. This first one will, among other things, fill you in on dark doings inside clinical trials, the semi-urban legend (i.e .it may be true) on the latest breakdown at the Large Hadron Collider, and the language gene that is so powerful, that was in the news this week (Tracker’s head hangs in regret for not rounding that one up), and that may be a big, deep reason that such blogs as this exist.

- Charlie Petit

Horn tooting time for the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, and thank you very much:

Voice of America /  Our World Science Show – Art Chimes: Website of the Week – Knight Science Journalism Tracker ; See the archives of other websites that got this listing here.

X-Ray Tech Schools – Jessica Martin: 50 great blogs to follow science research ; Ms. Martin serves a fairly narrow interest group. But just as with the archives of the VOA selections, her list of blogs might be useful for anybody wanting to check their own blogrolls for good ones to add.

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker tends to take local – i.e. U.S. -  carnage in mass media and in our beat’s presence in daily news as the flagging standard of the world. But we all know better. Several developing countries are going gang busters. And even in the UK, while things are perhaps not  extravagantly prosperous for the Fourth Estate and its science scriveners, some outlets are beefing up coverage handsomely. Take a look at the new Eureka, the monthly science magazine that The Times of London publishes. I missed the first one last month but not this second one (and thank you very much to science ed. Mark Henderson for nudging me).

It’s 60 pages, tucked into the regular editions, first Thursday every month, about 60 percent staff written and the rest freelance.

The pic pulled from the site, by the way, is of one of the mag’s contributors,  the American-born, UK-residing author of A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson as he visits and reports upon the soon-to-start-up-again LHC at CERN, which he dubs the unappreciated yet most exciting place on the planet at the moment. He looks very reporterly – tie askew, well worn corduroy coat, scrawled notebook precariously held in an overcrowded crook of elbow, and a serious, squinty, slightly confused look on his face. Good idea not to send one of the regulars to do this curtain raiser. They’ve done that already. It needs fresh eyes, it does.

Take a cruise through for yourself at the whole menu. But here are a few I briefly scanned:

• The Eureka Quiz (Regulars in the biz better get most of these…I missed one totally and much of a second one)
• Alice Fishburn: The big picture: China’s shoots of hope ; Short, and not as much of a softball as one might first suspect.
• Felicia Jackson, David Robertson: Is the idea of carbon trading just a lot of hot air? Not the polemic one might expect – a real explainer that gives this answer: Maybe.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Where are the Mexican science journalists when needed? There is much to criticize in the poor reporting about newly approved experiments with GMO maize in Mexico. News outlets  lost an opportunity to show what good science reporters are capable of doing, and why their expertise is so necessary in a world that is more and more embeshed in  science and technology. Mexican society clamored for clear information. The main newspapers have given them only confusion with accounts biased to the pros or cons. Of course there are exceptions but too few in such an important topic. It should have been treated more carefully. This time, smaller magazines from universities or research centers have done much better work than professional journalists.

Tantos encuentros y foros para reclamar más y mejor periodismo científico, y cuando tenemos la oportunidad de demostrar la gigantesca valía social de nuestra especialización en un mundo cada vez más influido por la ciencia y la tecnología, la desaprovechamos.

No pasa absolutamente nada si cubrimos a medias el último fósil mediocre encontrado por un paleontólogo británico en China. Pero en un asunto de vital importancia como los nuevos permisos de plantaciones experimentales de maíz transgénico en México, y sabiendo lo sensible que es la población a esta temática, la cobertura de los periódicos mexicanos debería haber sido mucho mejor.

Os aburriría si citara la lista de artículos que el Tracker ha estado rastreando estas dos últimas semanas (agradezco a los compañeros que desde México han compartido links y opiniones). La mayoría de piezas no están mal; pero pocas están bien, realmente bien. Y es una lástima, porque es un asunto que podría haber generado trabajos excelentes, convencido a nuestros editores, ofrecido claridad al lector, y reivindicado la necesidad de dar más espacio al periodismo científico de calidad. Sin embargo, el cruce de notas haciendo caso a veces de unos y a veces de otros, parece haber generado todavía más confusión en el ciudadano.

¿Quizás falta creérnoslo un poquito? ¿ser un poco más soberbios y celosos de nuestra labor? Hubiéramos deseado encontrar la actitud: “Mira gobierno… como periodista mi obligación no es creer todo lo que me digas sino buscarte las cosquillas; también en materia ciencia y tecnología, y especialmente cuando oigo discrepancias por parte de investigadores serios. Y tu, Greenpeace, no esperes que reproduzca de manera textual tus mensajes exageradamente alarmistas. Ya sé que te mueve más la ideología que la ciencia, y no me la vas a colar. A ambos: Os utilizo como fuentes, pero disculpadme si voy a añadir otras que me parezcan más objetivas, y contrastar declaraciones con estudios científicos no vinculados a la problemática. Estoy preparado para hacerlo, y es lo que la sociedad me exige.” (…) “Ah! Y no penséis que me chupo el dedo… sé de sobra que los organismos modificados genéticamente no son ni buenos ni malos de por si. Depende del tipo, las circunstancias, y si estamos hablando de salud, medioambiente o economía. No voy a perderme en generalidades, sino a hablar específicamente del caso concreto del maíz que nos ocupa, y en las circunstancias de nuestro país. Que no me venga nadie hablando de problemas de salud, porque en este caso ya sabemos que es irrelevante. Descarto de cuajo esta polémica. Y que nadie intente esconder el riesgo de transferencia de genes a especies nativas, porque sí es una preocupación legítima muy importante. Y no me precipitaré en evaluar factores socioeconómicos estando en una fase experimental, que pretende resolver preguntas antes de decidir si seguimos o no con el plan”.

Disculpad por extenderme, y por el tono engreído del texto. No me odiéis, sólo pretendo estimular un espíritu más combativo en nuestra profesión. La cobertura de El Universal, por ejemplo, ha sido decepcionantemente escasa. Podemos destacar un interesante foro con expertos, pero en general ha estado muy lejos de lo que se le supone. La Jornada ha hablado muchísimo del tema, pero como dijimos en un post anterior, sólo ha mostrado la parte más crítica del asunto, y sin ningún esfuerzo de recurrir a fuentes científicas no posicionadas. Ayer Matilde Pérez publicó un buen artículo sobre el papel del campesino en la preservación de la biodiversidad, pero hoy mismo Laura Poy Solano se atreve a subtitular que el cultivo de maíz transgénico pone en riesgo la alimentación del 20% de la población mundial. El cuerpo de la noticia no dice exactamente eso, pero escoger un subtítulo falseado como éste denota una predisposición por parte del periódico. En La Jornada de Aguascalientes, Jennifer González escribe un artículo centrado en los riesgos, pero bien ponderado.

En Milenio también podrían haber tratado el asunto en más profundidad, pero por lo menos hemos leído un par de piezas buenas, con tono más neutro, siendo crítica una y más positiva la otra. Hace ya algunas semanas Bernardo Caamal preparó una cuidada nota sobre el riesgo que suponía el maíz transgénico a las semillas criollas, y el pasado fin de semana Milenio Semanal apostó por un reportaje exhaustivo de Mónica Flores Lobato en el que por fin se pretende dar una visión global del asunto, con gráficos explicando qué es un organismo modificado genéticamente, y en un contexto divulgativo aunque se abuse un poco de términos científicos. Espetar en plena introducción “plásmido” o “enzima de restricción” aleja al lector. No es imprescindible citarlos, pero si se hace para ofrecer más información técnica a quien le interese (está muy bien) entonces se requiere una explicación. Y si ves que entonces pierde ritmo, pues se quíta aunque duela y verás como no ocurre nada.

Una última curiosidad de esta situación, es que publicaciones “pequeñas” han presentado notas de gran interés. Proponiendo que enviéis al Tracker tolo lo destacable que él seguro ha obviado, destacamos un par.

¿Cómo ves? presenta un fantástico artículo de Agustín López Murguía: “Sobre cerdos y maíz transgénico”, que valora de manera excelente pros y contras, y reclama la misma ética en los medios de comunicación masivos. La crítica a una información publicada hace unos años en La Jornada es el hilo conductor de una extensa historia de lectura muy recomendable para los periodistas científicos. Si al tracker se le permite, prescindiría de la referencia inicial a que la naturaleza lleva milenios modificando genéticamente animales y plantas. Es muy utilizada por los defensores de transgénicos para defender su inocuidad, pero contiene cierta trampa, porque sabemos que nunca se producirían de manera natural ciertos cruces que se dan en el laboratorio.

Enel Boletín Invdes del Foro Consultivo y Tecnológico, Héctor de la Peña prepara un excelente resumen de la situación. Muy directo e informativo. Intenta tranquilizar al lector diciendo que “cada permiso pasó por un riguroso proceso técnico en el que participaron el SENASICA de SAGARPA, la SEMARNAT, el Instituto Nacional de Ecología y la Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, quienes dictaminaron los principales beneficios y riesgos agronómicos y medioambientales del proceso experimental. Asimismo, todas las semillas a utilizarse en esta fase cuentan con la aprobación de las autoridades sanitarias de sus países de origen y de México, país que importa, procesa y consume maíz transgénico desde hace una década”. En el texto se lee una frase, que ojalá algún día se convierta en realidad: “Ahora el debate estará fundamentado en el conocimiento y no en posturas políticas o ideológicas”.

- Pere Estupinyà

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) A few weeks ago a Spanish nun with a PhD in Public Health became famous after recording a video (here with English subtitles) defending the hypothesis that H1N1 panic is due to exaggeration by WHO to favor pharmaceutical companies, and that they are putting the population at risk with dangerous vaccines. Her conspiracy theory got great impact due to her excellent communication skills, the deep knowledge of the subject she showed, and her evident honesty.  After so much about the pros an cons of her statements, El País finally takes a deep look. It finds plenty to criticize in the the arguments expressed by the newly, most famous nun in Spain.

Just today, as it happens, an article in El Universal (Venezuela) uses quotes from the sister as evidence to believe that the AH1N1 was created in a laboratory.

Hace aproximadamente 5 semanas, una monja benedictina del convento de Montserrat en las afueras de Barcelona saltó a la fama con un video crítico sobre la gestión que la OMS ha hecho de la gripe A /H1N1 y el desarrollo de la vacuna. Si se pudieran resumir los 54 minutos de video en una frase sería algo parecido a: “La tremenda exageración con que la OMS nos ha alertado sobre un virus menos peligroso que el de la gripe estacional responde a intereses económicos de empresas farmacéuticas, que no se preocupan lo suficiente por los efectos negativos que podrían provocar la enorme cantidad de adyuvantes contenidos en su vacuna”. Un mensaje conspirativo como éste lo pueden lanzar muchas personas, pero varios aspectos hacen diferente a Teresa Forcades: Su doctorado en Salud Pública le otorga cierta credibilidad frente al público no experto, y su condición de monja consigue que la percibamos como honesta. Pero lo fundamental de su éxito es la excelente manera en que defiende sus opiniones. En su video, Teresa Forcades empieza demostrando un conocimiento elevadísimo de los aspectos científicos que rodean a la gripe y el desarrollo de vacunas, así como el funcionamiento de las industrias farmacéuticas. Es una grandísima comunicadora. Lo hace tan bien, con un tono tan didáctico y convincente, que resulta normal sentirse aturdido y empezar a dudar de si vivimos a ciegas siendo manipulados por intereses corporativos. La situación de desconcierto empeora cuando su video empieza a generar una batalla de opiniones a favor y en contra. Por suerte, existe algo llamado periodismo científico cuya labor es escuchar a unos y a otros de manera crítica y neutra, analizar las evidencias que sustentan sus argumentaciones, e informar al público de manera objetiva y responsable. Al menos, esta es la teoría que debemos perseguir si queremos que nuestra profesión tenga una razón de existir en el panorama mediático actual y futuro.

Hacía días que esperábamos un reportaje como el publicado ayer en El País por María Sauquillo y Emilio de Benito: “Desmontando a la moja-bulo” . No es un trabajo fácil, y sin duda si uno lee el artículo con ojos críticos puede encontrarle pegas, frases fáciles de malinterpretar, y ser visto como una sospechosa defensa de las poderosas OMS e industrias farmacéuticas. A los lectores no les ha gustado el artículo, a tenor de la baja puntuación que marcan las estrellitas de votación bajo el titular y la revisión a algunos de los más de 500 comentarios que lleva en estos momentos. Pero… ¿qué saben los lectores de este asunto? La inmensa mayoría de los que comentan, muchísimo menos de lo que los autores del texto han averiguado tras seguir toda la información referente a la gripe A/H1N1, y entrevistar a una amplia batería de expertos. Hay mucho listillo con ideas sueltas, exponiéndolas sin sentir la responsabilidad de un periodista que publica en un medio como El País. Desde aquí, un apoyo a la actitud de María y Benito, defendiendo una postura a sabiendas de su impopularidad: la mediática monja ha exagerado sobremanera sus elucubraciones, y con toda la buena intención del mundo, ha creado una alarma social injustificada. Las medias verdades de Teresa Forcades, como el supuesto cambio de definición de pandemia por la OMS, los datos de mortalidad que se desconocían cuando ella grabó el video, el dudoso “poder” de la OMS para imponer sus políticas a los países, o la exageración con la que comenta los riesgos de las vacunas, así parecen indicarlo.

Si a alguien no le gusta esta postura anti-conspirativa, quizás se sienta más cómodo leyendo el artículo en El Universal (Venezuela) de Giuliana Chiappe, asegurando que el AH1N1 surgió en un laboratorio. De escándalo. El Ministerio de Comercio Venezolano invitó a Forcades a Venezuela después de sus polémicas declaraciones, y la periodista de El universal se encargó de exagerar todavía más las declaraciones de la monja. Se raya el mal gusto con afirmaciones como que se obtuvieron virus de la gripe española extrayéndolos de cadáveres, una frase de guión de cine como “un empleado del Laboratorio de Virus de Ginebra subió a un tren intereuropeo con una maletita llena de virus AH1N1. No se entiende de dónde vino ese material. La maleta explotó porque los virus se llevan refrigerados con nitrógeno líquido. En el vagón viajaban 61 personas…”, y un final donde se cuestiona la probada medida de lavarse las manos para mitigar la propagación del virus. Un artículo muy reprochable.

Y es que la comunidad científica no está para nada tan dividida como la población puede creer. En La Vanguardia (España), un artículo de Josep Corbella recoje las contundentes palabras el prestigioso investigador Pedro Alonso: ”Descalificar las vacunas es irresponsable”, en clara referencia a la actitud de Teresa Forcades. El premio príncipe de Asturias añade: “en el ámbito de la salud pública no conozco a ningún líder científico que cuestione el papel de las vacunas”.

De nuevo, no se trata de creer a ciegas en las palabras de unos u otros, sino de analizarlas en profundidad desde una postura neutral. En este sentido, la posición de Teresa Forcades podría haber sido considerada inicialmente un gran ejemplo de buen periodismo, obligado a escudriñar los entresijos de la postura oficial de la OMS. La actitud de la monja es encomiable, pero quizás debería haber permitido que posteriormente sus palabras se ponderaran.

- Pere Estupinyà

* UPDATE: El País publica un texto de la defensora del lector, Milagros Pérez Oliva, donde defiende su papel crítico con la teoría de la conspiración, pero reconoce errores de forma en la estructura del texto. muy recomendable lectura.

The Tracker wonders if non-Canadian non-science reporters who suddenly have an assignment on, oh, the relative merits of biofuels made from krill or algae, or a giant comet aimed straight at our Moon, or a finding that tuna are fully sentient, can call up something called the Science Media Centre of Canada for a tip on what to do and what’s this about anyway. It just had its announcement luncheon. As inspiration it has somewhat similar operations in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Most phone plans in the US include Canada in their affordable rate structures, so will there be a passport check if some journo on deadline calls from Omaha and yelps “Help!”?

Just wondering. Either way, it can’t hurt. The outfit, to start formal operation next summer, is aimed mainly at people not on the regular science beat.

A write-up may be found at the Canadian higher education trade pub University Affairs in a report by Peggy Berkowitz , and the new service’s own site: Welcome to the SMCC.   The key sentence in its welcome is “structural changes in the mass media mean there are fewer and fewer specialized medical and science journalists. The burden is falling instead on general assignment reporters….” In that sense it differs somewhat from the old and once quite useful US-based Scientists’ Institute for Public Information and its successor Media Resource Service, now either defunct or hibernating, the Tracker being unsure which. It clientele was in large part the regulars on the beat.

The list of members – meaning financiers – of the new service appears to include plenty of foundations, other non-profits, universities, and such who are presumably not terribly determined to skew the service’s advice and info too far or too often. Nobody can be regarded as pure even if the FBI does a full background check but this bunch looks quite respectable.

- Charlie Petit

A few days ago, to consternation by some of Andrew C. Revkin’s friends and especially those within the blogosphere, radio talkmeister and conservative lightning rod Rush Limbaugh said on the air that the New York Times reporter ought, if he really thinks mankind is capable to destroying life on Earth, to just go kill himself. The video of Limbaugh’s proposal is on Media Matters.

Among the blowbacks among bloggers was  at CEJournal, by Tom Yulsman at the Univ. of Colorado’s School of Journalism. Andy Revkin’s reaction on line is here. The attack, vicious even if not meant literally, was prompted by comments by Revkin on the role of overpopulation in climate change and similar environmental worries.

And now this particularly rabid – even by radio talk standards – attack has made it into the mainstream. NPR’s David Folkenflik reports it today on Morning Edition.

Folkenflik uses the episode as a news lede on a broader report on Revkin’s distinct mix of conventional news reporting, largely on climate change related topics, and his blog where he participates extensively in the policy discussions about that same topic. The piece is at heart an exploration of the changing roles of major media reporters, with Revkin example A, as the categories within the journalism trade go through the internet mixmaster. It also includes reminder that Revkin gets attacked from the left, too, although not as often as from the right.

And the piece notes a particular irony. While Limbaugh compared many enviros and other “wackos” worried over climate change to murderous, suicide-bombing “jihadists,” Revkin’s 19-year-old son recently signed up with the Israeli Self-Defense Forces to perhaps face the very so-called jihadists with which Limbaugh has compared the young man’s father. The senior Revkin wants Limbaugh to apologize to him and to his family.

- Charlie Petit

Members of a certain tribe of old timers in the business, this Tracker included, tend to agglomerate once in awhile at larger meetings to tell tales of working for Warren Kornberg. He was editor of an NSF in house magazine, Mosaic, that existed for 22 years. It provided a unique sort of work for science writers to stretch their horizons while sticking mainly to honest, declarative sentences. It remains a remarkable treasury of information. The targeted audience was the community of scientists receiving NSF grants, allowing them to read in plain English but deep detail what others in very different disciplines were doing. The pieces were long. In my case, the six I did remain those, of all that I wrote anywhere, with the least compromise. There were of course a few short-cut metaphors – but mostly  explanation of experiments or phenomena that told readers their natures directly.

Kornberg was a remarkable editor,  generous too but with a caveat. His instruction was to travel wherever necessary in the US and even beyond to report on a field of endeavour from its seminal participants (protagonists did not have to all be NSF grant recipients).  But don’t spend much money. “Shabby, but genteel” was his prescription for the lodgings to be listed on expense accounts. He was mercurial, given to furies and rhapsodies in equal measure. The magazine’s illustrations were often on the crude side, the art budget being small. But the stories remain solid and in many cases fresh and timely. They provide homework for any reporter wanting to glimpse the sweep and the roots of the research avenues that Kornberg’s magazine covered.

Mosaic closed during an NSF budget shakeup in 1992. As explained in this description of the project in the current issue of the Nat’l Assoc. of Science Writers magazine ScienceWriters, selfless friends have transformed Warren’s treasured, and now cut-apart, archive of issues into a pdf posted on line. It lists all the writers who subjected themselves, willingly and repeatedly, to Kornberg’s demands for clarity, completeness, and coherence. Once, he told a writer his piece was the worst thing he’d ever seen but was compelled to use it as he otherwise could not fill the issue. Behind the writer’s back, he then submitted it to a  journalism competition. It won. Surprise!  He said he actually thought it was okay.

Take a look: The Mosaic Archive. It’s impressively well-organized to get you to a piece of interest.

- Charlie Petit

Dan Gillmor had no bad news about journalism, science and otherwise, to share. “You already know about  that,” he said to a knowing murmuring of shared laughter-through-the-pain. He then launched into a well-drilled march through time of the technologies that changed how people communicate. “Each was a liberation of words from a priesthood.”  The Gutenberg press and its first run – of the Bible – was literal. Now, it is the old fashioned gate-keeping media dominated by newspapers that is the priesthood surrendering power.

Gillmor, a former tech writer at the San Jose Mercury News-turned-on- line- media- businessman who willingly shared the tough sledding in that line of work, is now director of the Arizona State University Knight Center for Media Entrepreneurship. His plenary talk opened the ScienceWriters 2009 joint meeting of the National Association of Science Writers annual workshop and the Council for the Advancement of Science’s New Horizons in Science briefing. About 330 science journalists and communicators – throngs of freelance reporters, a mostly-young crowd, lots of editors, and quite a few university and lab information specialists – are here including yours Tracker-truly. This is down a bit from Stanford last year, but that’s normal explained NASW president Marriett DiChristina of Scientific American. There’s always a fall off away from the coasts – and the recession hasn’t helped. Next year will, by the way, be in New Haven with Yale University hosting New Horizons.

(Yikes, amendment and apology here. Two days ago I wrote the hed in a fog and never looked back as I assembled the post. So if you’re confused where this meeting is, it’s in Austin. So am I. As in University of Texas, Austin, host of New Horizons. For half a day after publishing I had set the flag flying in San Antonio and didn’t notice the gaffe. Am examining my feet now to see if the shoes are on the correct sides, socks match, belt is through all the loops, and the shirt has no unusually bounteous dribbles. )

It’s a good meeting already , snugged up on the flank of the host U. Texas, Austin, campus. For fossils like me, a Saturday workshop session about on line and multimedia included a lesson in how to use bone-simple software to make narrated slide shows. Others in the class figured out how to put music in them too, and to make the slides move around like the Ken Burns effect that come in new Macs anyway. But I did manage to from an old grizzly bear assignment. Now, that’s a workshop with patience.

Today (Sunday) with New Horizons and CASW half of this duet takes over with authoritative talks from the tips of several scientific spears, all aimed at getting reporters and editors ready for news just coming into view (”new horizons’ for sure.) For the first time the program provides streaming videos of sessions, which you can find along with a Twitter link at the CASW site or just looks at #sciwri09.  The program is there too but if you’d like to drop in on something you particularly like, it’s also here. We have premier speakers (bios here) on new complexities in carbon and climate, how information theory helps neurologists, a Nobelist’s view of the LHC’s prospects, and a lot more. Talks wind up Tuesday. The video archives will be on CASW’s site. If they’re not there yet, try this at the vender, UStream.

Plus, blogging and reporting from the scene is abundant, including those by a team from Science News magazine led by its editor Tom Siegfried.

Happy Disclosure: I’m on the board of CASW, so am inclined to be particularly rosy about this mtg.

- Charlie Petit

These days it seems the energy and greenhouse effect beat is as much about business and money as it is about technology and global coupled climate models.

Thus we find, at the New York Times in the Business Section, this report from Jad Mouawad and Andrew C. Revkin: Saudies Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues. This seems a bit like extortion. One would like to read a bit more on the Saudi rationale for wanting such compensation. If spelled out, it might make sense. Maybe not too.

And at the Boston Globe, a story attributed in part to the AP: Next German gov’t to cut solar subsidies ; Reason appears to be both the nation’s overall budget problems and the feeling that as solar power goes mainstream it needs fewer special favors. The topic provides a vehicle for a general reminder to readers of the immense effort the German gov’t has put behind fostering a large solar energy sector.

This is late, but the two stories illustrate the timeliness of a piece a few weeks ago in the Observatory blog at the Columbia Journalism Review, by Curtis Brainard and Cris Russell. Entitled The New Energy Beat, it includes a Sidebar listing some of the energy-focussed web pages and print stories to be found at such media outlets as the Chicago Tribune, Discover magazine, The Guardian, NYTimes, MIT Technology Review, and many others, some of them local or regional. It’s an important story on demands placed upon media to regard energy and related matters as essential news that merits its own beat writers. The challenge, it says, is to make the subject “pop.” It also dissects the tendency of many outlets to steer slightly clear of public policy schisms over the reality of climate change by writing stories on it as news about energy policy. All reporters on the beat should take a look.

- Charlie Petit