'New Directions" workshop overview

It was a predictably foggy day in San Francisco as about 90 registrants hauled themselves out too early on a Saturday morning for the latest Northern California Science Writers Association's workshop, held Oct. 16 at San Francisco State University.

Plenary speaker K.C. Cole kicked off the day and David Perlman gave the closing address. In between, conference-goers had a choice of panels ranging from improving their story-sniffing skills to landing a coveted writing fellowship.

K.C. Cole's opening talk, "Lost in Translation: Why science writers have to lie," described lying and 14 other tools that are, in her experience, indispensable to good journalism. They include stealing, cheating, daring to be stupid, and making arbitrary calls. Cole writes about mathematics and physics for the Los Angeles Times. On lying, Cole explained that although an equation is most accurate at conveying a concept, a lie can be more effective. Science writers occasionally have to lie because "a really good caricature, even though it's not exact and leaves out a lot, means more than an exact portrait."

"Dare to be stupid," Cole continued, is "a really important rule." She speculated this might be why many scientists and science writers do some of their best work in their earlier, dare-to-be-stupid years. Cole finished with a quote from her late mentor, Frank Oppenheimer, celebrating oft-maligned, basic science. "Understanding is a lot like sex. It's got a practical purpose, but that's not why people do it normally." Science writers should not be afraid to eschew objectivity, she said, to report on the joy of pure discovery.

No wonder this woman can convince major publications to run stories on string theory.

In the morning's "Back to Basics" workshop, John Wilkes, director of science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Ted Glasser, director of journalism at Stanford University, joked that they've both unexpectedly ended up working in a sea of scientists. Wilkes spoke on engaging readers while Glasser talked about the importance of bringing science to bear on policy issues. April Lynch, a health writer at the San Jose Mercury News, stressed the importance of finding a human element. She suggested using friends and colleagues to track down the "ordinary people" who make science stories relevant.

In the other room, the "Writing Books" panel hardly got to the issue of writing, but focused instead on the task of pitching, packaging and marketing a book. This panel included Laird Harrison, freelance writer and former editor for WebMD, J. Madeleine Nash, senior contributor to Time, and Pat Murphy, director of publications for the San Francisco Exploratorium. All offered advice on how they made the transition to writing books, while Ted Weinstein, a San Francisco-based literary agent who represents many science writers, offered some practical tips on getting a publisher. Like cattle, apparently, it's all about branding.

We ate boxed lunches on the chilly outdoor patio. My dining companions were a video-gaming editor from Wired, a freelancer who writes for New Scientist, a psychologist who's been thinking about moving to writing, and two aspiring novelists who have been doing contract writing for textbooks. Conversation at our table ranged from reminiscing about recent NCSWA fieldtrips, to how to get a freelance pitch past editors' screens, to a quick poll on which recreational drug is now most widely used worldwide. (The winner, caffeine, was kindly supplied in various forms throughout the day.)

Back in the workshop, "Innovation Journalism" featured a breed of writers who cover new technologies from development through to the marketing stage. It's science, technology, business and sometimes a bit of politics, said David Nordfors, a visiting scholar at Stanford University who directs a fellowship program in innovation journalism. "There is a market here," Nordfors said. John Joss, a science and technology writer and book author, and Wade Roush, senior editor at Technology Review, gave advice on how to write clearly and keep up with the breakneck speed of new technologies. Tom Abate, business reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, mentioned that the important thing for new writers is to write every day. "If I were where you are now, I would be blogging," he said.

Meanwhile, "Tools to Dig Deeper" was a frenzied rush of advice on how to dig, organize, and analyze information. J.T. "Tom" Johnson, professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, gave a crash course on how to take Internet searching to the next level. Griffin Palmer, database editor at the San Jose Mercury News, explained how he extracts public records data using the sleepy-sounding "structured query language" and then subjects the information to a startling array of statistical analyses. Finally, Phil Cohen, San Francisco bureau chief for New Scientist, recounted how he's used relatively simple investigative techniques -- like looking up patents, government documents, and digging through company's own Web sites -- to unearth a story.

"Mid-Career Fellowships" provided some avenues to make time for such information-digging. K.C. Cole joined Penny Duckham, director of the Kaiser Family Foundation media fellowships program; Korey Capozza, an Oakland-based freelance journalist; and John Cox, author of Weather for Dummies, to talk about fellowships: who can apply, which ones to apply for, and how to get them. An excellent summary of the talk and a list of fellowships is posted on the NCSWA Web site.

It was fitting that David Perlman, who gave the closing address, was doing an interview on his cell phone in the lobby just before the talk. Perlman has worked at the San Francisco Chronicle as a senior reporter and editor for 53 years and is past president of NASW. He has received numerous career accolades and has two science-writing awards named after him. In his talk, Perlman described a research cruise to the Galapagos in 1964, retracing Darwin's footsteps, where he filed 30 stories over two months. Ten years later, he was on the cruise that discovered living creatures around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. More recently he was one of the first journalists to report on AIDS. Being with researchers while they're making discoveries is his favorite way to write about science.

"All of these things are what makes -- for me -- being a science reporter more fun than anything else I can think of," said Perlman, whose many side-splitting anecdotes revealed his true delight in his career.

Panels were chaired by Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley; Lynn Yarris, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; Dawn Levy, Stanford University; Charlie Petit, from U.S. News & World Report; and Mary Miller, from the Exploratorium. Santa Cruz-based freelancer Robert Irion organized the day's events.

K.C. Cole