Helen Harvey of the Taranaki Daily News writes about Sciblogs, a recent science communication initiative from the NZ Science Media Centre.
Sciblogs aggregates the efforts of almost 30 people blogging about science – most of whom are active scientists working either independently or in the country’s universities and CRIs.
An excerpt: (full version here)
“One of the reasons Sciblogs was set up was to give scientists a platform where they can discuss big issues in the news that are science-related in greater depth than the mainstream media can go into in a short news article, [SMC manager Peter] Griffin says.
“”We were coming across a lot of scientists who we were dealing with [through the Science Media Centre] who wanted to get into science communication, but weren’t really all that comfortable doing radio or TV or even print interviews, but wanted a regular place where they could explore their area of expertise. A blog seemed like a good way to do it.”
“So he found a bunch of scientists who had set up their own blogs and invited some scientists who hadn’t blogged before and put them all under a one banner.
“”It’s really starting to take off. Our stuff is now going on Google news so it’s getting picked up easier in search engines. At the moment we have between 1000 and 1500 people using it a day.””