For Immediate Release
April 28, 2020
Contact: Christine Dell’Amore
rueparadis@gmail.com
newsbriefaward@gmail.com
Winners Announced for 11th Annual DCSWA Newsbrief Award
Washington, D.C.— A digital news story about Machiavellian plants and a video about jumping maggots have won the eleventh annual D.C. Science Writers Association’s Newsbrief Awards.
Longform journalism often gets our accolades, but short pieces are the true workhorses of science communication. In the spirit of recognizing these unsung works of excellence, we have been offering the Newsbrief Awards since 2009. In 2015, we added a Multimedia category.
For the 2019 award, two separate panels of distinguished science writers judged more than 50 entries.
In the Writing category, Nala Rogers won for her story “Plants Get Creative to Fend Off Foraging Insects,” which ran in Inside Science. “Through breezy text and solid reporting, Rogers delivers a pithy, fascinating read on this clever plant’s pollen-trapping ways,” said one judge. Rogers’ work impressed judges so much that she earned an honorable mention, as well, for her story “New Leech Found in D.C.-Area Swamps,” also in Inside Science.
Rogers covers the Earth and creature beats for Inside Science. She is a graduate of the Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz, and she has written for Science, Nature, and Scientific American, among other publications. She has a penchant for stories that champion underappreciated species.
The other Writing honorable mention went to Tina Hesman Saey for her story “Losing genes may have helped whales’ ancestors adapt to life under the sea,” published in Science News.
Hesman Saey is the senior writer at Science News, where she covers molecular biology. She is a native of Nebraska, but adopted St. Louis as an additional home town after spending 15 years there as a Ph.D. student at Washington University and a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Tina also has a masters in science journalism from Boston University.
In the Multimedia category, Helen Thompson and Susan Milius earned top prize for her video “How some maggots jump without legs” on Science News. “The music makes this! Fabulous combination of music and visuals in the intro. Really great pacing for the visuals throughout,” said one judge.
Thompson is the associate digital editor at Science News, where she helps manage the website, makes videos, builds interactives, wrangles cats and occasionally writes about things like dandelion flight and whale evolution. She has undergraduate degrees in biology and English from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Milius has been writing about botany, zoology and ecology for Science News since the last millennium. She worked at diverse publications before breaking into science writing and editing. After stints on the staffs of The Scientist, Science, International Wildlife and United Press International, she joined Science News.
One of the Multimedia honorable mentions went to Sofie Bates for her video “Contact lenses flushed down toilets pollute oceans” in Inside Science.
Bates is a science writer who unexpectedly fell in love with Premiere Pro and has since changed her self-designated title to “print and multimedia storyteller.” She’s a recent graduate of the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Bates is now making videos about NASA’s Landsat satellites as an intern at Goddard Space Flight Center.
Another honorable mention in the Multimedia category is awarded to Kerri Jansen, Tien Nguyen, and David Vinson for their video “How burial methods affect the environment,” on Chemical & Engineering News.
Jansen is a multimedia reporter at Chemical & Engineering News, where she produces news videos and co-hosts the podcast Stereo Chemistry. Prior to joining C&EN’s science team, she reported for trade publications covering the waste management and plastics industries.
Nguyen is a freelance journalist, video producer, and reformed Ph.D. chemist. Her stories and scripts about drugs, space, energy, and beyond have been featured in Chemical & Engineering News, Nature, Vice News, TED-Ed, and other outlets.
Vinson started his career in media production way back in the ’90s, when nonlinear editing was not yet a thing. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is currently a video producer at the American Chemical Society, where he produces Speaking of Chemistry for C&EN.
DCSWA plans to celebrate the winners later this year and will share updates about a virtual ceremony as they become available. Each winning team will receive $300 and a trophy; those awarded honorable mentions will receive certificates.
DCSWA members were eligible to submit entries published between January 1 and December 31, 2019. The D.C. Science Writers Association is an organization of more than 500 science reporters, editors, authors, and public information officers based in the national capital area. Details on how to enter the 2020 Newsbrief Award will appear on the DCSWA website by the end of the year.
Photos of the winners are available upon request.
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