The fourth in an ongoing series of National Science Foundation-funded science communications and journalism workshops will take place in early June at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The workshop, Science Communications and the News Media, is one of six programs aimed at identifying and working on impediments to science communication through the mass media. The journalists participating in the workshop include Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie, Jr.; Columbia University School of Journalism Dean Nicholas Lemann; and journalism professor Philip Meyer, University of North Carolina, and author of Precision Journalism and The Vanishing Newspaper.

The Columbia workshop -- like the three workshops held previously at the University of Rhode Island, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University of Washington -- brings together leading climate and marine scientists and print, broadcast, and web journalists in an informal, "off-deadline" exchange aimed at helping each discipline better understand the culture and modus operandi of the other. With two final workshops in the series to be conducted during the next 12 months, the project will culminate in a major report or book on science communications and mass media, including a number of recommended "best practices" for scientists and journalists to consider when working to inform the public about science.

Other journalists who will participate in the Columbia workshop at the invitation of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, the NSF grant recipient for this project and the publisher of Environment Writer, include:

• David Appell, Ph.D., a freelance science journalist, based in New Hampshire;
• Chris Bowman, an environmental reporter for the Sacramento Bee who has covered California and the American West for 19 years;
• Daniel Grossman, Ph.D., a print journalist, radio producer, and 2002 winner of the Peabody Award;
• Matt Hammill, television reporter and anchor with 20 years of experience covering general and environmental news in Illinois;
• Bill Kovarik, Ph.D., professor of Media Studies at Radford University, author of several books, and board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists;
• Walter T. Middlebrook, deputy Long Island editor, Newsday;
• Jon Palfreman, an award-winning independent TV producer whose credits include the two-hour 2000 NOVA/Frontline "What's Up With the Weather?";
• Andrew Revkin, science writer, The New York Times, author of two books about the environment, and recipient of several journalism awards;
• Don Wall, a television journalist for 27 years and since 1989, environmental reporter for WFAA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth; and
• Dale Willman, executive editor of Field Notes Productions, a nonprofit production group that reports on environmental issues for national news outlets.

Butting heads at times with the journalists expected to voice their own perspectives about media coverage of complex and sometimes controversial science issues, and openly sharing the communications shortcomings of their own discipline, a number of the nation's most respected climate scientists will also attend the workshop. They are:

• Alan Betts, Ph.D., an independent atmospheric researcher based in Vermont;
• Tony Broccoli, Ph.D., associate professor at Rutgers University's Department of Environmental Sciences;
• Kim Kastens, Ph.D., founder and co-director of Columbia University's Earth & Environmental Science journalism program, a collaboration with the journalism program;
• Jerry D. Mahlman, Ph.D., senior research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado, and previous director of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, New Jersey;
• Michael Mann, Ph.D., at the University of Virginia and, in the fall, a professor in the Penn State Department of Meteorology and director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center;
• Michael B. McElroy, Ph.D., Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies, Harvard University, and chair of Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science;
• Maureen Raymo, Ph.D., research professor at Boston University, and adjunct professor at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution;
• Gavin Schmidt, Ph.D., a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York;
• Ronald Stouffer, senior research meteorologist at NOAA's Climate Dynamics and Prediction Group, GFDL, and considered to be one of the foremost climate modelers in the world;
• Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D., professor at Ohio State's Department of Geological Sciences and winner of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2005;
• Stephen E. Zebiak, Ph.D., director-general of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction.

For additional information on Science Communication and the News Media project, see a listing of articles and reports from past workshops.