From awarding its first competitive prize in a field of just 137 U.S.
newspaper entries, to this year’s 75th-anniversary contest that may
draw as many as a thousand entries from around the world, the
program now known as the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards
has kept pace with a dramatically changing media landscape while
continuing to promote superior science journalism.
“I don’t know of another journalism award that has played the same
role in setting and maintaining an international standard of excellence.”
said Robert Lee Hotz of The Wall Street Journal, who is a three-time
winner and a member of the Managing Committee for the awards.
Today, in a political environment that has been damaging to jour-
nalism, the awards perform a crucial function, said Laura Helmuth,
health, science, and environment editor for The Washington Post.
“The most important value they uphold is truth—of real information
in a world of misinformation, of verifiable facts in an age of people
falsely calling truth ‘fake news,’” said Helmuth, who has been a long-
time judge for the contest. “Science and journalism are both based
in honesty and transparency,” she said, “and using journalism to
interrogate science is a powerful combination that lets readers know
how the world works.”
Established in 1945, the awards were the idea of Robert D. Potter,
who was the president of the National Association of Science Writers.
Through an associate, Potter secured the sponsorship of the Westing-
house Educational Foundation and helped arrange for the American
Association for the Advancement of Science to independently admin-
ister the awards. In its inaugural year, the program presented citations
to 13 prominent reporters who had been pioneers in U.S. science
journalism. The first competitive award, selected among 137 entries in
1946, went to James G. Chesnutt of The San Francisco Call-Bulletin.
Special activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the awards
will be held 14 to 15 February at the AAAS Annual Meeting, which is
taking place this year at the Washington State Convention Center
in Seattle. The Kavli Foundation luncheon and media roundtable at
noon on 14 February, showcasing the work of the current award win-
ners and the anniversary of the awards, will be hosted by Hotz. That
evening, at 7 to 10 p.m., the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards
reception and ceremony will be held at the Pacific Science Center
and will be hosted by Alan Boyle of GeekWire. A wine-and-cheese re-
ception in honor of the 75th anniversary—open to general attendees
of the Annual Meeting as well as its Newsroom registrants—will be
held the next day, 15 February, at 4 to 5 p.m.
Launched at the dawn of the atomic age, a key goal of the awards
program in its early years was to encourage closer cooperation be-
tween reporters and scientists in explaining dramatic new advances
in science and engineering to the public.
The first judges for the contest were not only journalists but also
politicians and academics, and the awards program actually had520 31 JANUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6477 sciencemag.org SCIENCEChris Schmidt (left) and Julia Cort of NOVA, Joe Palca of NPR, Laura Helmuth of The Washington Post, and Robert Lee Hotz of The Wall Street Journal.
AAAS Kavli Awards:
75 years of top
science journalism
Evolution of the program accurately reflected
changes in reporting and the world
AAAS NEWS & NOTES
By Michaela Jarvis
PHOTOS (TOP TO BOTTOM, THEN COUNTERCLOCKWISE): STEVE RINGMAN/THE SEATTLE TIMES/TAKEN UNDER NOAA PERMIT 21348; COURTESY NOVA/WGBH; COURTESY NOVA/WGBH; COURTESY OF JOE PALCA; AAAS; AAASPublished by AAAS