Top science and environmental reporters and editors and leading climate/atmosphere and marine scientists will meet in early November for a 1-1/2 day workshop aimed at improving science communications for the public through mass media reporting.

Journalists and scientists are being brought together for the first of a planned series of workshops over the next several years. With the National Science Foundation providing the lead financial support, the workshop project is being organized and managed by the University of Rhode Island's Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, the publisher of Environment Writer. Financial support for the activity is being provided by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Centers for Coastal and Ocean Science (NCCOS), and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The November 9-11 Rhode Island workshop, and also a second workshop in the series scheduled for next March at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, will feature reporters' and scientists' rationales for the "inviolable principles" that provide the ethical underpinnings of their disciplines. While the workshop invited journalism and scientist participants will try identifying obstacles impeding more effective science communication, the emphasis will be to identify "common enemies" and potential "work-arounds", not bashing perceived or real shortcomings of those across the table.

The multi-year, multi-partner project plans call for a new group of print and broadcast journalists and climate and marine scientists to participate in each of the five or six workshops during the next several years. Reports on each workshop will be carried here, in Environment Writer, along with a disclosure statement indicating the publication's direct interest in the overall workshops project.

Participants in the November 9-11 Rhode Island workshop:

Journalists

• Steve Curwood, Executive Producer, Host of Living on Earth, National Public Radio;
• Cornelia Dean, Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, and New York Times Science Editor (1997-2003);
• Camille Rose Feanny, Producer, CNN Science & Technology Unit;
• Richard Kerr, Senior news writer, Science;
• Peter Lord, Environmental Writer, Providence Journal;
• Jon Palfreman, independent television producer for NOVA/Frontline, BBC, and PBS;
• Boyce Rensberger, Director, MIT-Knight Science Journalism Fellowships, and former New York Times and Washington Post science journalist;
• Andrew Revkin, science and environment reporter, The New York Times;
• Randy Showstack, Reporter, EOS;
• Sarah Webb, Ph.D. candidate, Indiana University, awarded a journalism workshop fellowship.

Scientists

• Susan Avery, Director, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, professor of electrical and computer engineering, University of Colorado;
• Elbert W. (Joe) Friday, senior scholar, National Research Council, former director of the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, now with the University of Oklahoma;
• Judith L. Lean, research physicist, Space Science Division, Naval Research Laboratory;
• Jerry D. Mahlman, senior research fellow, National Center for Atmospheric Research, former director of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory;
• Michael E. Mann, assistant professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia;
• James J. McCarthy, professor of biological oceanography, Harvard University;
• Ellen Prager, President, Earth2Ocean, Inc., Key Biscayne, Florida., and former assistant dean, Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami;
• Roger Street, regional director, Meteorological Service of Canada, Environment Canada.

A science graduate student or an upper-class undergraduate student will be awarded full participation in the workshop.

Accredited science and environmental journalists and environmental journalism faculty members interested in being considered for participation in a future workshop should contact Bud Ward at wardbud@cox.net. Future issues of Environment Writer will provide more information on the project.

October 2003