Media Matters
New York's Science Fest Breaks Barriers
SOURCE: Comedy Central
The World Science Festival in New York City was a huge success—and that's because it garnered attention that ranged far beyond coverage in traditional science media outlets. But to communicate science broadly, there's still a long way to go. Above, Brian Greene on The Colbert Report.
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In trying to determine whether to rate last weekend’s World Science Festival, set in New York City, as a success or not, I didn’t have to go much beyond the following fact: Columbia physicist and festival co-founder Brian Greene was on the Colbert Report to promote it. In the process, Greene got the best PR conceivable for science—Steven Colbert holding up a World Science Festival flyer and plugging specific events. What more could you ask for?
For this achievement alone, Greene and his wife, former ABC producer and festival co-founder Tracy Day, truly deserve to be called the “first couple of New York science,” a phrase generated by New York Times science writer Dennis Overbye and one that I hope will stick. I’ve been scanning the web, and it has been hard to find anything but rave reviews for what Greene and Day created in New York—tales of fascinating, sold out panels simply abound.
But let’s be clear about the true nature of this success, which I think depends at least as much on the the types of media coverage that the World Science Festival garnered as it does on how many people actually attended. The attention to the festival clearly went well beyond traditional science media, which for the most part have a fairly limited reach. Not only did the World Science Festival get incredible billing on Comedy Central; we found an outlet like ABC’s Good Morning America covering the event twice, and even declaring science sexy, and geek chic.
Once you create intersections like these, you invite broader types of media attention, which is precisely what science needs right now.
The apparent trick here was to make sure that the World Science Festival’s content brought science into intersection with many other walks of life—and so Greene, Day, and Board Member Alan Alda closed out the NASDAQ (economics), got Michael Bloomberg to give the opening address (politics), and populated panels with people like The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman (entertainment). Once you create intersections like these, you invite broader types of media attention, which is precisely what science needs right now.
That’s especially the case at a time when traditional forms of science coverage appear in decline. In early 2008, a Pew analysis found that on average, if you watch five hours of cable news, you can expect to see just one minute devoted to coverage of science and technology. Meanwhile, from 1989 to 2005, the number of U.S. newspapers featuring weekly science sections shrank by nearly two thirds—from 95 to 34.
In this context we can’t simply assume that traditional science journalists will carry the message of science to the whole population. Rather, we need almost the reverse process—for science to bring its message to the entirety of the media.
In that endeavor, the World Science Festival represented a huge start. But we still have a long way to go, as was apparent once you actually watched how the Festival wound up being covered on Comedy Central and ABC. Sure, a lot of science came across through these mass media venues (albeit in very short snippets). But at the same time, the shows still kinda treated the scientists they were covering as if they were Martians or something.
You can see it in Greene’s appearance on the Colbert Report. It’s an unqualified triumph just to get on the show in the first place, but notice the tone differential between guest and host. Greene wants to talk about how cool science is—”Science is the act of inspiration. Science is the greatest of adventure stories”—but Colbert counters—humorously, of course, but it hit close to home—that most people see scientists as individuals who consider themselves superior and look down on everybody else. (”Of course we’re intimidated by science, because science holds itself above everybody else—above God, evidently. You guys have been kicking ass since the Enlightenment.”)
Something similar came across on ABC. Again, it was good, positive coverage, but Good Morning America couldn’t help describing the World Science Festival’s goals thusly: “Organizers hope to shift science from the chalk-dusted fringes into America’s cultural center.” If science today is starting out from the chalk-dusted fringes, it’s inarguable that it has a long way to go.
Nevertheless, at least for a few days, the World Science Festival managed to integrate science rather fully into the life of an extraordinarily busy city, and rescue it from the standard estrangement from the rest of our culture and our media. Any way you look at it, that’s a staggering accomplishment.
Chris Mooney is a contributing editor to Science Progress and the author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. He blogs on The Intersection with Sheril Kirshenbaum.
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