Dear ASC-ers,

An issue running through the ASC Annual Conference in February was the threat to science communication in the broad from further erosion of key measures of specialist science reporting and commentary in the media. This may not directly affect the majority of ASC members and conference delegates. Of the 270-odd delegates around only a dozen of us, or ~5%, were specialist science reporters. Most could only stay for a day to appear on a panel, more’s the pity as a good number of the others are employed to gain space or air time in our outlets and both parties would have benefited from more one-on-one contact.

At the conference the Australian Science Media Centre announced its national count of us as being about two dozen. Raising this as an issue is not merely a case of self-interest, though those of us on the inside certainly have a stake in protecting and developing the sector. Christopher Warren, Federal Secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, and Michael Gawenda, former Editor of “The Age” and now at University of Melbourne, spoke strongly at the conference on the core values to the media and society generally of growing the number of long-term specialists, not only in science. It was significant that their cases came from influential observers who are not in-house, so to speak.

Such statistics may only come to life and relevance to the great majority of ASC members on learning of personal experiences from the coal face. These have been usefully supplemented by Robyn Williams and Wilson da Silva in the latest issue of “The Walkley Magazine” of the MEAA, Issue 60, February-March 2010, just out. Thanks to the Editor of The Walkley, I have URLs for these two articles and commend them to ASCers to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.

http://www.walkleys.com/features/617/http://www.walkleys.com/features/617/ (Robyn Williams, “Facing extinction”)

http://www.walkleys.com/features/616/ (Wilson da Silva, “My science experiment”)

As you assess the “national strategy for science communication” for making comments, you might note that the ABC has been nominated as a “strategic partner” and compare it Robyn’s dismal case study. You must be left wondering how this nomination and (unspecified) expectations came about and their prospects in practice.

My own not-so-sanguine assessment of the “national strategy” will appear in the public prints later on. (I happen to have been the sole reporter present for questioning Science Minister Kim Carr at his “media conference” after he launched the “strategy”, which was not a convincing demonstration to national politics of the importance of our field of work, as expressed ultimately by budget planners.)

Cheers all!