International Science Journalism Associations

Internationalization of Science Journalism

The rapid and luxurious bloom of science journalism worldwide in the late 20th century mirrored in part the transformation of science research into an international endeavor. As the world became increasingly interconnected, it was clear that issues such as climate change, water shortages, sustainable development, and pandemics knew no borders. Because global problems demanded global solutions, many science journalists hoped to establish effective global networks for sharing vital information, ideally though a world union or federation of the many new national groups.

The first step toward internationalism was creation of the Ibero-American Association of Science Journalism (AIPC) in 1969 by the Spanish writer Manuel Calvo Hernando. The AIPC linked a score of national associations in Latin America (some of them extremely small) with a base group in Spain. In addition to promoting exchanges of journalists and conducting training programs, the AIPC sponsored [Page 410]a series of bihemispheric “congresses” that would set the model for future international conferences. Indeed, at the 1977 congress in Madrid, the Venezuelan delegation proposed creation of a World Union of Science Journalists. Although an international organizing committee was formed and some potential funders, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), were contacted, this first formal expression of the “world union” concept went little further due to political, economic, and linguistic limitations.

Actually, the idea of a world union had come up even earlier—and was dismissed—during the creation of the first truly global such association, albeit one made up of individual journalists, the International Science Writers Association (ISWA). In 1966, a group of senior science writers and editors (among them Gordon Rattray Taylor of the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC], John Maddox of Nature, and Dennis Flanagan of Scientific American) met in London to discuss the benefits of forming a loose network. The next year, using the occasion of the World's Fair in Montreal, Canada (EXPO 67), this core group, joined by several other prominent writers (including Robert Cowen of the Christian Science Monitor, Howard Lewis of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and Fred Poland of the Montreal Star), met to write and approve a draft constitution, to elect officers, and to debate, and finally dismiss, a motion to create a federation of associations in favor of what ISWA would become (and remains today): an “organization of individual membership.” Maddox became the first president.

...