March 2025
REGISTER NOW: March 12 Writing Workshop
Registration is open for the third and final session of NCSWA's Lunchtime Writing Workshop series with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, professor, and story coach Jacqui Banaszynski.
WHEN: Wednesday, March 12, 2025, 12 noon - 1:15 PM
WHERE: Zoom (link will be provided upon registration)
SESSION 3: THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW
A journalist’s most essential tool is the interview. That’s true in everything from human interest stories to explanatory and investigative work to data-driven projects. We need to lead with a combination of curiosity, critical thinking, acute listening, and keen observation and apply those in real-time dynamic relationships — relationships that Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson has called “accelerated intimacy.” We’ll discuss strategies and techniques to make the most of interviews — including choosing the best sources, building trust (or at least credibility), ensuring accuracy, broaching sensitive topics, and challenging spin.
Click here to reserve your spot.
Connect with NCSWA on Bluesky
Follow us at @ncswa.bsky.social for event announcements and other updates. You can now also add your Bluesky handle to your NCSWA profile. (Log into your account, and click on “View profile” then “Edit profile.” After making the chages, click “Save.“)
Open Notebook's Science Writer Database
A free resource to connect science communicators
The Open Notebook has created a free, public database of journalists, writers, editors and other communicators who cover science, health, environment, and technology. The purpose of this database is to help people within the community expand and diversify their networks and find potential freelancers, collaborators, editors to pitch, conference panelists, award judges, new colleagues, voices to follow on social media, and more.
View or join the database at this link.
Training, Conferences and Awards
May 31 is the deadline to apply to the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund, which offers three awards each year: one to a freelance journalist covering international news, one to a reporter living and working in a developing nation – or a country in transition – and one to recognise the unsung work of news fixers. The three winners each receive a US $5,000 cash prize. For more information, visit the fund website.
April 30 is the deadline to apply for CASW’s Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award. For more information, visit the award website.
June 30 is the deadline to apply for CASW’s Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award. The award is intended to encourage young science writers by recognizing outstanding reporting and writing in any field of science. The 2024 winner will receive $1,000 and expenses to attend the ScienceWriters2024 conference to receive the award. For more information, visit the award website.
June 30 is the deadline to apply for CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. For more information, visit the award website.
May 2025 is the opening of a call for entry to apply for the Rory Peck Awards, which recognize the talent and dedication of freelance journalists and filmmakers working in news and current affairs worldwide. It is one of the only awards in the world to exclusively highlight the work of freelancers. For more information, visit the award website.
NCSWA About Town
The Association of American Medical Colleges honored Bruce Goldman with 2025 Robert G. Fenley Writing Awards for Excellence (two gold and one silver, respectively) for three articles:
In addition, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) interviewed Bruce recently for their magazine spotlighting science-writer: https://www.case.org/resources/issues/january-february-2025/bringing-science-down-earth
Christine Heinrichs has been selected as the at large representative to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. She was officially sworn in at the February 21 meeting in Salinas.
Lucille Lang Day’s poem “Declared Extinct” appears in the Climate Change issue of Wordpeace: https://wordpeace.co/lucille-lang-day/
Robin Meadows recently attended an Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources workshop on Land Back, which connected journalists with Indigenous people working to restore their heritage. Robin is also writing a series on tribes and water in California as part of a three-year fellowship with Maven's Notebook, a California water news site, and so far has covered partnering with tribes in the Delta and how cultural burns boost streamflows.
Danna Staaf's next book, Tentacle Mysteries: Octopuses, Squid, and the Scientists Who Dig Up Their Secrets, will be published by Greystone Kids in 2026--with illustrations by the author.
New Members
Jenna Ahart, UCSC, Santa Cruz
Julie Bobyock, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley
William Burkholder, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco
Gordon Campbell, Bleeding Edge Biology, San Francisco
Alejandra Canales , University of California, San Francisco, Foster City
Joseph Caputo, Arc Institute, Palo Alto
Jordan Cooper, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Erin Cline Davis, Self, San Francisco
Mark DeGraff, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz
Shein Ei Cho, PLOS, Mountain View
Jasmin Galvan, UC Santa Cruz
Meili Gong, University of California Berkeley, East Palo Alto
Caroline Hemphill, UC Santa Cruz
Rachel Henderson, Rachel Henderson Science Communications, El Cerrito
Andrew Huss, UC Davis, Davis
Bowen Jiang, Genentech
Daniella Jimenez, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Hannah Johansson, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Carly Kay, UC Santa Cruz
Jesse Klein, freelance, Oakland
Paul Kleyman, Journalists Network on Generations
Greta Lorge
Sara Martin, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Summer Maxwell, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
David Moreno, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Kristy Mualim, Stanford University, San Francisco
Skylla Mumana, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Amy Nippert, Stanford, Mountain View
Jenny Nuss, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oakland
Lisa Plachy, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Nava Rawls, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Gordy Slack, Slack Ink, Oakland
Joseph Steward, ASCO, San Francisco
Fiona Ulrich, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Lindzi Wessel, Freelance
William Woodhams, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Anna Zou