Journalism at NYU - Science, Health and Environmental Reporting

SHERP's customized curriculum is aimed at giving students both the breadth and depth of knowledge they need to be outstanding science, health and environmental journalists. Class work is supplemented by frequent out-of-class reporting assignments and by visits from dozens of prominent guest speakers from the worlds of journalism and science. Some speakers appear as part of SHERP's "Inside/Out" evening lecture series, while others visit during regular classes. (For a partial list of recent guest speakers, see the bottom of this page.) SHERP also hosts special events that attract large audiences of journalists, students and others from throughout the New York region, such as a 2006 forum on how journalists should cover "intelligent design" theory. You can listen to an audio feed from that event, or watch video excerpts from a 2007 symposium on synthetic biology featuring famed genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter and a panel of leading science journalists and policy analysts.

As you might expect for a program based in New York City, the science journalism capital of the world, SHERP also organizes field trips to places such as Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bell Laboratories, Merck Pharmaceuticals and the New York Times. Some SHERP students attend the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science or the annual meetings of the National Association of Science Writers, the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Association of Health Care Journalists. (The SHERP faculty includes leaders of all three journalism groups). There are also fellowship opportunities for students to attend other science conferences.

The program's new student-run webzine, scienceline.org, is also fully integrated into the curriculum. SHERP students assign, report and edit stories for the webzine, which also publishes stories students have produced for class work.

First Semester (Fall)

Writing and Reporting Workshop I (four credits) is "Boot Camp," in which each new class is introduced to the basics of what news is and how it is processed. Initially, students practice writing in-class news stories in proper Associated Press format. Later, they use New York City as a laboratory to gather and report actual news events outside the classroom. The has two purposes: 1) To teach students the rudiments of news gathering and writing under realistic deadline conditions, and 2) To introduce students to the culture of American journalism in its various forms, including the precepts of the First Amendment and the concept of a free press that goes back at least to Milton's Areopagitica of 1644.

Current Topics in Science, Health and Environmental Journalism (six credits) introduces students to the world of science journalism by looking at scientific topics that are at the cutting-edge of current research and also have profound implications for the way we live. In other words, they are the raw material for great journalism. As students immerse themselves in some challenging areas of current science, they will read the work of highly accomplished researchers and journalists, and will also hear from them directly in class. The goal throughout is be to understand and adopt the processes that the best science journalists use when they cover controversial science. You will learn how journalists interact with scientists, conduct research, organize information and write stories. Just as importantly, students also sharpen their analytical skills by writing almost every week for the SHERP webzine, scienceline.org. Covering an assigned beat, students follow the peer-reviewed journals and other sources to stay on top of the news as it happens.

Science Literacy and Numeracy (four credits) aims to give students a historical and literary context for science journalism, and will also introduce them to crucial concepts in statistics, probability and data analysis. The course will be rigorous, with an extensive reading list tracing the development of science journalism and examining the science journalist's role in society. There will also be heavy usage of problem sets and writing assignments aimed at showing students how to recognize "good science" and it's opposite. The course begins with a discussion of the conflict between scientists and non-scientists, and how science journalists are a bridge between the two cultures. Then students explore how society's way of understanding the natural world has changed over the centuries, the modern methods and philosophies of the practice of science, and some issues that affect scientists and scientific journalists that are not dreamt of in those philosophies. A mini-course in numeracy also arms students with the weapons to understand and dissect scientific studies. Using that knowledge, the class then returns to the scientific world to look at how science journalists have plied their craft, and at the pressures they face that make it hard for them to be solid bridges between scientists and non-scientists.

Second Semester (Spring)

Writing and Reporting Workshop II (four credits) is an introduction to long-form journalism -- profiles, trend pieces, investigative reporting, and stories told using narrative techniques borrowed from fiction. Students learn to hone and refine their topics, and how to structure their work to eliminate the "muddle in the middle" problem that writers so often face with long articles. They participate in a "pitch slam" in which their classmates help critique their story ideas, and they learn to write the kind of compelling query letters that will get them assignments. SHERP's Bench Press program, which sends students into NYU science labs to cover current research for Scienceline and other publications, is an integral part of this class.

Environmental Reporting (four credits) trains students to write incisive articles about environmental issues and alerts them to the special problems reporters face covering a beat that is often highly charged and highly politicized. For this reason, the investigative aspects of environmental reporting are emphasized. Specific topics covered include environmental law, risk assessment, nature writing (including Muir, Leopold, Carson and McPhee), advocacy journalism, toxicology, epidemiology and environmental databases. By the end of the course, students can smoothly incorporate all of the elements of a successful environmental story - data analysis, expert opinion, "real people" impact, and descriptive writing - into a finished product that's good enough to be published professionally (and often is). Students produce at least one in-depth, magazine-style story and several shorter pieces.

Elective in Journalism (four credits) is an opportunity for SHERP students to explore areas of special interest by taking a course offered elsewhere in the journalism department (or, by special permission, elsewhere in the university). Opportunities include television and radio production, magazine writing, criticism, history of media, investigative reporting, cultural reporting, literary journalism, business reporting, blogging and many others.

Summer Session

Journalistic Judgment (four credits) is SHERP's press ethics class. It emphasizes the special dilemmas and unique ethical decisions that come with covering science, health and environmental news. The First Amendment, censorship (including self-censorship), transparency and ethical decision-making are key topics in this class.

Multimedia Science Journalism Workshop (four credits) teaches students to combine the skills they learned in previous writing and reporting classes with advanced multimedia storytelling techniques, allowing them to explore stories beyond the boundaries of the printed page. The emphasis is on solid science journalism employing multimedia tools -– not just bells and whistles. Advanced tools for audio, video, and web work are explored, and are utilized to produce full multimedia web packages.

Third Semester (Fall)

Medical Reporting (four credits) provides an in-depth look at many of the most important contemporary topics in the always dynamic field of medical journalism, including the biology of cancer, environment-related illness, epidemiology, and the precepts of sound medical research and peer review. Students write several short pieces on journal reports, medical conferences and community health lectures, and one longer, feature-length piece on a health topic of their choice. Medical researchers and prominent journalists are frequent guest speakers.

Science Writing (four credits) is an advanced class that draws on all the skills students have practiced and polished during the previous year. The goal is to give a realistic preview of life as a working science journalist, from finding a story idea to pitching it to surviving the editing process to making sure the final product is accurate, clear and compelling. The class looks at science journalism from the editor's point of view, and also emphasizes the process of popularizing complex scientific and technical information for the mass media. Students produce at least one feature-length story, as well as several shorter pieces. The goal, as ever, is for students to write stories they can pitch to professional publications.

Fieldwork in Journalism (two credits) consists of an internship, officially taken in the third and final regular semester. (Students may choose to actually serve the internship during the summer, and many do two or even three internships while at SHERP). Students work closely with the SHERP internship coordinator, who helps them prepare their resumes and advises them on internships that fit their interests and aspirations. For more information about SHERP's outstanding internship program, and a list of places where students have interned recently, please go to the SHERP internships/jobs page.

A partial list of recent guest speakers:

Charles Bergquist, contributing producer, Science Friday
Burkhard Bilger, author and staff writer, The New Yorker
David Bishop, vice president of nanotechnology, Bell Labs
Martin Blaser, professor of microbiology, NYU
Deborah Blum, author and professor of journalism, University of Wisconsin
Kristina Borjesson, freelance writer, former producer for CBS News and CNN
Jeanna Bryner, assistant editor, Science World Magazine (SHERP 21)
Burton Budick, professor of physics, NYU
Adrienne Burke, editor, New York Academy of Sciences
Benedict Carey, neuroscience writer, The New York Times
John Carpi, president, Advantage Communications consulting
Laura Chang, science editor, The New York Times
Mariette DiChristina, executive editor, Scientific American
Alan Dove, freelance science writer and editor
Jenny Everett, senior editor, Popular Science
Katherine Eban Finkelstein, author, investigative reporter
Amy Fishbein, senior editor for health, Fitness Magazine
Scott Gottlieb, deputy commissioner, federal Food and Drug Administration
Nathaniel Greene, senior policy analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council
Dan Grossman, freelance radio and web producer
Susan Hassler, editor in chief, IEEE Spectrum
Robin Marantz Henig, author and contributor, The New York Times Magazine
Scott Hensley, pharmaceutical industry reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Robert Lee Hotz, science writer, Los Angeles Times
Kazuhiko Ito, assistant professor of environmental medicine, NYU
Mark Jannot, editor in chief, Popular Science
Sandeep Jauhar, M.D., freelance medical writer for The New York Times
David Cay Johnston, reporter, The New York Times
Elizabeth Kolbert, author and The New Yorker writer
Keith Kloor, senior editor, Audubon Magazine
Margaret Kriz, environment and energy reporter, National Journal
Michael Lemonick, senior science writer, Time
Vincent Liota, senior series producer, NOVA ScienceNow
George Lundberg, editor in chief, Medscape
Apoorva Mandavilli, news editor, Nature Medicine (SHERP 17)
Faith McLellan, senior editor, The Lancet
Richard Meryman, former reporter, Life Magazine
Kathleen McGowan, senior editor, Psychology Today (SHERP 15)
J.R. Minkel, freelance science writer (SHERP 19)
Don Monroe, freelance science and technology writer (SHERP 22)
Sam Moore, associate editor, IEEE Spectrum Magazine (SHERP 16)
Michael Moyer, executive editor, Popular Science
Jill Neimark, author and freelancer
Bryn Nelson, science writer, Newsday
Alex Nussbaum, environmental reporter, The Record
James Prudden, editorial director, McMahon Medical Publishing
Vincent Racaniello, professor of microbiology, Columbia
Paul Raeburn, author and magazine writer
John Rennie, editor in chief, Scientific American
Antonio Regalado, science writer, The Wall Street Journal (SHERP 12)
Andrew Revkin, environmental reporting, The New York Times
Andrew Rundle, cancer epidemiologist, Columbia Univ. School of Public Health
Jessica Snyder Sachs, author and freelancer
Nancy Shute, science writer, U.S. News & World Report
Rebecca Skloot, freelancer, author and contributing editor, Popular Science
Lora Sporney, adjunct professor of nutrition, Columbia Univ.
Dawn Stover, contributing editor, Popular Science (SHERP 1)
Britt Norlander, associate editor, Science World Magazine (SHERP 21)
Davia Temin, president, Temin and Co. consultants
George Thurston, professor of environmental medicine, NYU
John Timpane, associate editor of editorial pages, Philadelphia Inquirer
Michael Waldholz, health editor, Bloomberg News Service
Phil Yam, news editor, Scientific American
Carl Zimmer, science author, blogger and freelancer for The New York Times