Science journalism training
A new Australian website with information for journalists about good science journalism
The bulk of journalists entering undergraduate and postgraduate courses in journalism come from an arts and humanities background and can find reporting complex science stories a challenge.
To address this challenge, an expert working group—comprised of some of Australia’s top science journalists and science communicators—published a report in 2011 with recommendations to support journalists who report science.
One of the recommendations in the report—Science and the media: From ideas to action—was to “Develop a unit on reporting research that can be incorporated into undergraduate journalism courses“.
The group felt that the accuracy of reporting on key science issues could be improved if journalists are given some basic training in reporting on research findings during their undergraduate degree. This could include training on how to assess the credibility of experts, understanding the peer review process and making sense of scientific reports and basic statistics. This training is applicable across a wide spectrum of news stories and would be beneficial for all journalists not just those wanting to work on a science round.
They currently have six modules:
(via the NZ Science Media Centre)
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »