Harnessing the Internet

Yesterday I tagged along with one of the “break-out” groups, as they tackled their assignment: find a controversial subject in science, and cover it using the many interactive tools of the Internet. 

One questions popped up repeatedly as we brainstormed: how would we make this idea a viable business model?

Where would the money come from?

Who would use it?

How would our users find it?

Eventually, the group (very scientifically) agreed to assume that all of these questions were taken care of, so that they could continue with the exercise.

But skepticism was apparent.

When people no longer read newspapers and stop listening to the radio, will they accept lesser substitutes to the high-quality reporting that they used to get through traditional news outlets?

Or will they seek out new ways to find this information, and in doing so, make experiments like the one we participated in yesterday into feasible business models?

Getting Personal

Making a story personal is hard, especially when it’s about the newly discovered oceans of methane on Titan, as Adam Frank pointed out.  But it seems like everyone agrees that relatinga topic to a reader can make it better.

“There is a collective yawn out there,” Matt Crenson said, “so how can we shake them up?”

As groups present their projects this morning, there has been an emphasis on how best to draw people in to their sites through personal narratives.  One group proposed to feature families affected by global warming by allowing them to blog about their experiences.  It could feature a family from Antarctica, who is literally at the icy edge of the controversy, and a farming family in middle America, whose crops may be suffering. 

Matt Crenson suggested including an “interactive-build-your-own-story-assembler,” feature about stem cells.  The website would include primary resources, like the original science article describing the breakthrough, and audio files of interviews with a source.  The reader would be able to take a quiz, and their responses would go into a story.  Correct answers would be written in black, and incorrect answers would be red.  Users can then rate other user’s story, which takes advantage of people’s competitiveness.

Even though stories like Titan’s seas can’t be easily personalized, their inherent beauty can carry them.  While relating stories to people can be a great hook, we should all remember that on a basic level, people do care about science, and some things are just too cool to not write about.

The Central Resource (how to make it)

A running theme of this symposium seems to be that there’s a need for supplemental content online - a central resource of sorts - that will keep readers coming back for more information. How might such a site be reasonably implemented?

It seems to me that there are two possibilities: each publication could create several sub-sites for consistently hot issues, or there could be some non-partisan (non-profit? Governmental? International?) site to which many different publications could link.

Several sites already have sub-sites dedicated to particular issues. The New York Times, for example, has a sub-site dedicated to climate change . Of course, it seems that the last time it was updated was in 2001. It seems a good idea to put all the related articles from a publications archives into one place, but there may be practical barriers to this.

A central issue is that it’s costly to produce supplemental content (as Vicki Valentine and others pointed out in yesterday’s web technology show-and-tell session).

One solution to this might be found in another idea that’s floated around today: the idea of responding to hot topics.

The second group suggested that their site might somehow respond to whichever stories were most-clicked on Yahoo! or Google news. They also suggested that the most-clicked topics on (or portions of) their site could change colors (which I think is an excellent idea).

Because of the high price (in money and time) of fancy supplemental material, it might be practical for sites (either within a publication or at a non-profit) to wait a minute before developing such content. That way, they could add bells and whistles selectively to those stories that actually generated interest. Or they could add fancy video side bars to stories they thought needed more attention.

The issue with non-partisan resource sites is: How could you get Science, Nature, the New York Times, the USA Today, Discover, National Geographic, and all the rest (sorry if I didn’t hit your publication) to link to the same page?

Who would they all trust to accurately portray all the information on the issue, when they all rely for their survival on being known as the Best Source themselves?

Good interactive ideas

Yesterday Cris Russell asked what “interactive” meant. She pointed out that merely clicking around a web site is little different than flipping through a newspaper or magazine.

Some of today’s suggestions have proposed excellent ideas to have readers meaningfully interact with a web page.

* Calculating your own carbon emissions
* Dueling blogs (two on one page) or Expert blogs (hopefully with expert contributions, to avoid he said/she said faux-balance of opinions)
* Coolest user on YouTube
* Interactive maps (to which users can upload their own illustrations of climate change, for example)

Also, I think it’s a great idea (nice one, Kat) to get attention-starved and under-appreciated grad students to advertise their work online. It would probably be a lot of work to set up a streaming feed from a lab, and to would require quite a bit of technical expertise. But we grad students are used to having to do all the work, and by and large science grad students are fairly tech-savvy. So a site would only have to ask, “do you want to be a celebrity?” and grad students would probably jump to do whatever it took to post information from their lab. 

Joke of the Day, as told by Joe Palca

During some free time away from a scientific meeting in LA, a PI and her two graduate students are walking along the beach.  They stumble upon a lamp in the sand, and one of the students picks it up and rubs it.  Out pops a genie, who says, “Since I don’t know which one of you found me, I’ll give each of you a wish.”
The first graduate student says, “I wish that you send me skiing in the Alps, with fresh powder, beautiful mountains, and a snifter of brandy when I’m tired."
The genie grants the wish and the student disappears in a poof of air and sand.
The second graduate student steps forward and says, “I wish to be scuba diving in Bermuda, and I want good visibility, amazing marine life, and a nice mai tai afterwards.”
He also disappears.
The genie then turns to the PI and asks for her wish.
"I want them both back in lab after lunch.”

As a graduate student whose absence from her lab has been sorely felt over the last few days, I appreciate the sentiment of the joke.  But what I can’t figure out is why, WHY, didn’t they wish for their PhDs?

Yeah, but who’s going to build it?

The first two presentations this morning presented very interesting-looking web sites with very vague sources of funding and unnamed contributors.

I understand that everyone at this conference works for different publications, and that resorting to media consortiums and non-profit sites with unnamed editors is a way to stay on safe ground. But come on, folks.

A site run by some non-specified government agency or consortium of competitors is a site run by no one. Fantasies of large staffs and pie-in-the-sky ideas of experts contributing for free will not lead anywhere.

Larry Gonick pointed out that this was a conceptual exercise, because it’s easier to do everything than to make small, focused suggestions, and there were only a couple of hours yesterday to work on this. Fine. But I’d be very curious to hear more practical ideas about how such grandiose plans might actually be put into action today in the discussion of the presentations.

Images as Scientific Evidence

Rebecca Perry spoke yesterday not only about the use of images in science journalism, but also the use of images in science, as data.

Understanding the purpose of an image is important because if this is misunderstood, the image itself can seem to convey different meanings.

Researchers these days produce much of their data as images. Molecular biologists look at fluorescent microscope images of cells to determine how a protein’s concentration, location or expression is changed in response to manipulations.  Similarly, astronomers and physicists peer into the universe with techniques that have become increasingly complicated.

The images produced by these methods are much different than something we can see with our own eyes, even with the aid of a microscope or telescope.  Scientists use complicated processing and modification to produce representations of something that was previously invisible.

As science journalists, it’s important to understand how these images are generated, what one is looking at, what it means and whether the evidence is likely to be reliable.  This involves the same fact checking, reporting and research that science journalists have always done.

Power of Images

Larry Gonick, creator of the Cartoon History / Cartoon Guide explanatory comic books, discussed the value of image in narrative this morning.

“Image is not about making a page pretty,” he said. “The images should serve narrative ends.” He disparaged the idea that a cartoon figure pointing to the most important equation on a page served any useful purpose.

This message could—should—have strong consequences for the presentation of science online. Gonick pointed out that the most visually salient thing on one of the web pages in a previous presentation was one of the ads. Which should not be the case.

“We’re in the business of capturing readers’ eyeballs,” he said.

Gonick uses human figures in his comic book illustrations to drive points home. He also shamelessly anthropomorphizes. It’s intuitively obvious that putting people into images makes them easier to relate to. But there’s probably a deeper neurological reason for this.

Visual cortex dwarfs other sensory processing regions; we’re visual creatures. And significant parts of that processing structure are devoted to understanding human / biological motion and human facial expressions. Adding lifelike figures to a graphic serves two purposes: It makes the image “pop” and it gives a reader’s brain another handle on a difficult concept.

Spread Thin

So, judging from the discussions of the last few days, a modern science writer should have:

- a deep knowledge of statistics and an ability to evaluate scientific studies
- photographic skills
- web layout skills, preferably with a specialty in Flash
- broadcast experience of some kind (or at least some experience with video)
- an ability to determine what aspects of a story are best told in text as opposed to image.

(anyone care to add any more?)

... I’ll stick with my PhD program in neuroscience, thanks.

An Editorial Everyone Should Agree With

by Andrew McGregor

Alan Boyle of MSNBC exhibited some of the new online technologies, such as audio slide shows, that can illustrate the theoretical look of a moon base and things of this nature.  The multi-media potential of the internet certainly has not been explored.  Yet, what everyone in the room seems to be ignoring is the role of good writing and good journalism in attracting an audience: basically, quality.

During my graduate studies in journalism I was often baffled at the way new technologies were blamed for the impending death of the newspaper.  This was exquisitely strong at USC as many a faculty member arrived there courtesy of a buy-out-deal from the tempestuous LA Times.  My demographic of the younger male variety was particularly called out as not reading newspapers in addition to variegated economic considerations like ad revenues from the employment and real estate sections.

I confess, I don’t subscribe to a single newspaper; instead I read them online.  However, the reasons for this have absolutely nothing to do with technology because you know what? I do read journalistic periodicals on real paper: for example every week I read ‘The Economist’.  A British weekly news magazine.  I do this because it is well-written and honest in its stances on news coverage and interpretation.  I also trust ‘The Economist’ over anything I read online.  It is a bit pathetic that I have to seek news from across the Atlantic Ocean because I don’t want to read articles that make me feel like I am bathing in processed food.  I don’t think I’m alone in this, I met with one of their editors a few months ago and he told me that The Economist’s circulation is up 46 percent in America.

Strange isn’t it? Good writing and good reporting leading to an increasing and loyal readership? Hmmm, something odd is afoot.

Many of the brilliant and talented writers in this room have voiced similar complaints to their higher-ups and the response they have ineluctably received is that, “the average American just doesn’t care about this.  The average American isn’t educated enough to understand this...” Has anyone considered the possibility that the average American would read the newspaper more if it didn’t suck?

Certainly there will always be a steady American Idol/Britney Spears portion of the population.  This perception cannot help but be encouraged by the fact that the companies that own newspapers own American Idol and if not Britney Spears herself then her likeness and persona.

However, the insistence on these new technologies is also a convenient sell for additional cost-cutting measures.  The internet and digitization of technology now allows one reporter to take photos, edit video, cut an online radio broadcast, and write a brief story.  The field of journalism should just take the US Army’s recruitment line: A Reporter of ONE.

The new technologies are making it possible to cut news staff even further and given that the internet is starving for content there is no logical way this will lead to an increase in quality.

It would be swell if the profound potential of the internet could be employed to the betterment of science writing and journalism in general.  However, I fear that all this talk of technological innovation online is actually a justification for further reducing the pool of available journalism jobs.

Technological innovation will not solve the current problems of science writing and journalism as a whole.  In what other field could one cut resources, remove local personnel and then when customers turn away blame the public for being too stupid to understand?

The road to quality cannot avoid hard work and sacrifice and the current batch of journalists are doing both; they are just having the road torn from beneath their feet.

New media, new role?

This morning, internet pioneer Alfred Hermida reminded the group that it does no good to bemoan the fate of newspapers and other traditional media if the next generation simply isn’t reading them. He encouraged everyone to face the challenges and get excited about the opportunities presented by the internet.

It’s about “retaining the skills we have, but operating in this new medium,” he said.

He mentioned the participatory nature of the internet as a prime example of its potential to engage a new audience.

But participation is not what journalism has been about. It seems that the internet demands a whole new set of skills, and poses an important set of questions for what the role for science writers will be in the future.

The morning’s next presenter, Dan Grossman, gave excellent examples of various web sites (on Antarctica and Madagascar). If journalism can be likened to screenwriting, this is more like set design or directing.

Furthermore, the kind of content that Mr. Grossman illustrated has none of the ephemerality of a newspaper story. They stay put, and become part of a whole readily-available structure. Web pages like these provide an excellent bridge between working scientists and a curious public, but they represent a vast departure from the day-to-day nature of print media stories.

The fundamental questions here are:

Is the role of science writers online to create a structure for scientific education? Or is it to continually update the public on the advances and consequences of modern science?

... and is this a financially feasible process?

(I’d love to see some statistics on the viewing of these sites).

Not the Be All-End All

There are different levels of science journalism. I look at the kinds of science news we do at Discovery News - text and video - as a kind of invitation to people who want to know more, not the be all and end all on a topic.

Our text stories are limited to about 400 words—occasionally we’ll go longer if the topic warrants it or we want to cover something more deeply—so we can’t really go very deeply into things. And our video stories (http://www.discoverynewsvideo.com) are usually around 3 minutes.

But hopefully, through succinct reporting that presents a good overview of what any given research is, we’ll prompt readers to go deeper into the topic. We try to facilitate that through sidebar links or video content that’s relevant to the story.

Lori Cuthbert, Director, Discovery News

Scientists and Journalists May Find Common Ground Online

by Andrew McGregor

The primary source material for science writers, the scientists themselves, are quite often a problem during reporting.

The reasons scientists are doing what they do have nothing in common with why journalists want to write about them.  The scientists may just like using math to look for the face of God or enjoy studying chimpanzees when a PhD opportunity was roaming nearby.

Scientists also have a fear of being misquoted or misunderstood.  This is a valid concern as so much energy in the scientific career is exerted to learn one small thing very well that it is often difficult to translate this knowledge in terms that the average journalist can understand.  Issues such as these are exacerbated by the fact that journalism relies upon standardized narratives in order to convey information such as a personality profile of a celebrity or human interest story of the kind-hearted woman with forty cats ilk.

Conduct such as the preceding is antithetical to much of the scientific culture where even papers published by one author still use the word “we”.  The scientific community deems personal glorification to be vulgar and places the scientist who seeks such a thing in a suspicious light.

This deadlock of mutual misunderstanding may have a solution in the blogosphere because many scientific discoveries are reported according to what the journalists already know or conflict of interest situations may emerge where the scientists have a vested interest in seeing their findings reported.  The blogosphere can provide instant feedback into the claims of scientific discovery as there is more of a back and forth relationship than in other forms of journalism.

The blogosphere also lends itself to multi-media interpretations of scientific discoveries as scientists themselves can blog or provide visual representations of their work.

There is optimism in the room that through this technologically facilitated go-between scientists and journalists can learn to communicate...even if they can never really speak the same language.

Lemonick’s challenge

What are we after, here?

We want to engender a trust of scientific evidence, through an appreciation for the process that produces that evidence.  We want people to know why they believe what they believe. Many participants emphasized (or implied) that focus on scientific process is the way to achieve this, and I believe they’re right.

However, Michael Lemonick pointed out that there has been a great deal of excellent science writing that has done exactly this. Many writers have pointed out the fallibility/reversibility of science, stressed process over facts, and highlighted the difference between common and scientific usages of terms like “theory.” Many of the attendees have written stories conveying the passion and drama of science. Even with all of these great pieces of writing, half the population still disbelieves evolution and trusts astrology.

The proposition that if we could only produce more articles about science process, things would be different - Lemonick said - is kidding ourselves. People have read these stories, and the world hasn’t changed. Maybe more stories would have more effect - but what reason do we have to believe that editors will include more stories now, hearing the same arguments they always have?

KC Cole pointed out that there is such a thing as a tipping point. Continued emphasis can have an effect on editors and on the public consciousness. New media also provide a unique opportunity to collect thorough statistics on readership. Every click on a page can be counted, in a way that every page read by newspaper or magazine subscribers could not. These statistics could prove convincing to editors (and advertisers) that there ought to be more science in the media.

There seemed to be a general consensus of the types of stories that ought to be told. The questions that remain are how and where to tell those stories, and how to convince editors to run them. And Mr. Lemonick’s challenge should be kept in mind: how do we know we’re not kidding ourselves, telling good stories in the same old ways? How do we know that what we’re doing is truly New?

Welcome to the Covering Science in Cyberspace Blog

Two dozen prominent science journalists and science communicators were invited to participate in this special conference with three goals: 1) Identify the critical issues facing science journalists in the digital age; 2) identify innovative forms of multimedia story-telling and presentation of complex issues online; and 3) identify “best practices” for coverage of science issues on digital platforms. Among the topics discussed were:

• Defining exactly what is “science”;
• Revealing untold science stories and determining why they have not been told;
• Exploring visual journalism and digital story telling techniques.

Knight Digital Media Center welcomes comments from readers related to the journalists’ specific discussions or related to the more general topic of science journalism. To post your comments, please browse the blog posts once the seminar has begun.