By Alexandra Witze ‘92 SB, Earth & Planetary Sciences

The importance of both science and journalism has never been greater than in the era of COVID-19. Drawing on decades of experience, journalist Alexandra Witze will discuss how media outlets go about covering scientific stories and how that coverage has evolved over the years. Most recently reporters have been struggling with the hollowing-out of newsrooms as well as an increasing amount of misinformation about topics including climate change and vaccinations. Alex will talk about the challenges facing science journalism and about how people can become more effective news consumers.

Speaker biography:

Alexandra Witze is a science journalist and correspondent for Nature magazine. She writes news and features, primarily about the physical sciences, from her base in Boulder, Colorado. Her work also appears in Science News, Knowable, and other outlets. With her husband Jeff Kanipe, she is the author of Island on Fire, a book about the extraordinary 18^th-century eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki. Among other places her reporting has taken her to the North Pole, to an earthquake zone in China, and to Maya ruins in the Guatemalan jungle. She has a bachelor’s degree in geology from MIT and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She grew up in Bernardsville.