J226 Science Reporting

Note: Students need to enroll in both the main class and connected fieldwork section. This class only meets Thursdays from 2-5pm (the fieldwork doesn’t have a separate class meeting as is part of the main class.)

Class No: 34028; Fieldwork section: 34029

This course offers an accessible introduction to science reporting and story-telling. Students in the course will learn what constitutes the science beat, and learn, on or off that beat, how to find the dramatic and compelling narratives in scientific inquiry and discovery.

Climate change, biodiversity, food and agriculture, public health, and other critical areas of inquiry all begin with science: This class is intended to give you a basic facility with scientific literature and sharpen your attention to the narratives contained in the insights and revelations of scientists. We’ll have guest lecturers talking about their cutting edge research and critical readings of science writers. We’ll be sharpening your story-telling skills so you can tell compelling, vivid narratives rooted in or backed up by science. Students working in all mediums are welcome.

Science reporting is a booming field, particularly as climate change reshapes the journalistic and scientific disciplines. We’ll probe into the implications of these epic-scale disruptions and consider ways of reporting on the ‘responses’ to these changes. The class will help prepare you for the new media environment where specialization is highly valued. And we will explore how climate change is reshaping every journalistic beat, as well as scientific inquiry across every discipline.

Because this is a graduate-level course, we will go beyond reporting basics to think critically about science reporting, and interrogate the social inequities that determine who gets protected from hazards and who does not. We’ll offer tips on the trap-doors to watch out for as the natural and social sciences become contested territory. And we’ll probe into the political, economic, and sociocultural forces that shape science news stories and public attitudes.