Cuban authorities prohibited the arrival to the Island of a group of journalists who have been selected to participate in a training workshop to cover the Global Forum for Health that will be held from 16-20 of November.

I wondered what I was going to do with the stack of business cards I gathered from the World Conference of Science Journalists in London. Then a friend of mine, Coturnix from A Blog Around the Clock gave me the idea of interviewing partcipants. So kicking starting off, what I hope will be a series of posts, is Deborah Blum, a fellow WFSJ blog member, and one heck of a writer.

Time to take a deep breath – this is going to be hard. As a journalist, I’m about to do the unthinkable and praise a rival newspaper.

In his essay ‘Science journalism: Too close for comfort’ (Nature, 25 June 2009) the American science reporter Boyce Rensberger analyzes the history of science journalism and distinguishes three ages: the ‘Gee-Whiz Age’, the ‘Watchdog Age’ and the ‘Digital Age’. About the first two there can be little disagreement. However, to call the third age – our present time – the ‘Digital Age’, tells only something about the technology used to convey science journalism, but nothing about its character. I would call our age the ‘Entertainment Age’.

Scientists often blame science journalists for being superficial and being sensationalists. But how do science journalists themselves look at their jobs, and at science journalism in general? Is it true that the main thing they want is to score with their stories? Or do they prefer balanced, in-depth reporting, that can arguably be more boring for the general public? And what’s the judgement of science information officers, who’s job it is to try and make sure information about their university or institution reaches the media as much as possible?

Journalism and New Media students at Leiden University and Fontys School of Journalism in Tilburg, both in the Netherlands, scrutinised media reports last year, functioning as fact checkers. Their supervisors Alexander Pleijter, Peter Burger and Theo Dersjant wrote a contribution for the recently published anthology 'Journalism brought into discredit' produced by the Catholic Institute for Mass Media (KIM, University of Nijmegen) in which they described what the students had discovered. The part of that chapter that looks at causes and offers suggestions is reproduced below.

CAPE TOWN: Bill McKibben looked tired. Tired, but intense. The 350.org organiser-activist sat opposite me at the table of a curb-side café, punch drunk from crossing time zones. South Africa today, Israel tonight, who-knows-where tomorrow. His stare fixed on the brick paving somewhere to my left as our conversation lumbered slowly to a start.

“I read your article and I didn’t quite understand what ‘star density’ means”, a good friend of mine, Sasha, told me last week. She’s a very intelligent girl, we studied together at the Moscow State Linguistic University. But linguistic education in no way provides you with scientific insight, and, unfortunately, in most cases neither does secondary school in Russia.

Philadelphia Magazine recently named Jim MacMillan Philly's best "Nuevo Journalist". In other circles he is known as Philly's best unemployed journalist. MacMillan, a veteran of the Philadelphia Daily News and a Pulitzer Prize winning AP photographer, has recently finished a model that he hesitatingly calls “entrepreneurial journalism".