How I Lost My Job

At least I wasn't ungrateful for my job while I had it. In fact, I said (more times than you could shake a stick at) if I ever lost this job I didn't know what I would do because I would never be able to replace it.

"This job," for the past 12 years, was as senior producer for ScienCentral, a production company specializing in science video, whose news division operated as a public service and not-for-profit thanks to grant funding, mostly from the National Science Foundation.

Like any type of journalism, science media coverage is always at risk of being eclipsed by "sources" with political/financial agendas, only, you could argue, even more so since the language and techniques of science can be mystifying to people not trained in science. The mission of ScienCentral News was to employ science journalists, in a publicly-funded environment not beholden to any particular organization or interests, to put science, medical, environmental and technology news in front of regular folks. And one of the best ways to do that is still local TV news.

Local TV stations these days can't afford to employ science journalists, and ScienCentral News actually gave its video stories for free to local stations nationwide. (The network's contribution in this scheme is the distribution of the stories to all the local affiliates, which would have been an extremely expensive thing for ScienCentral or the NSF to do otherwise.) And it turned out that in fact, if stations were offered a trustworthy, independent source of free science news, they would air that instead of some other crap they get for free

In fact, my personal measure of how good we were was not how much air our stories got, although that was often measured in millions of viewers. It was the very few times when one of our TV network media partners, which distributed our stories to its national network of local affiliates, actually opted not to feed one of our stories about a discovery that was both really new and potentially controversial. And then later, after our reporting proved trustworthy as always, they would end up covering the story after all, only instead of airing our scoop they would be playing catchup.

But this was a rare occurrence because our reputation was known, which was that pretty much the only thing we didn't approach with skepticism was the scientific method.

Uniquely, as part of its NSF-funded obligations, ScienCentral's impact was actually measured by independent researchers. The result was that you could say the project was a demonstrated success and it would be an accurate statement even by scientists' standards. The main finding was that people remembered seeing our stories on TV, and that they remembered the information they learned from those stories. Our stories increased scientific literacy in the general public, something the general public sorely lacks.

So, on a normal workday for me for the last 12 years, I got to be at the leading edge of a small band of independent science journalists adhering to exceptionally high standards and employing a really effective and even beautiful medium to report and explain the most important new science research, while also sneaking in lessons about how such research is done and inviting thought and debate about its implications for peoples' lives and public policy, all in 90 second bits of airtime complemented in-depth by topnotch Web reports.

Ie, filling a much-needed gap in trustworthiness that is now (IMHO) gaping.

We lost our jobs in June with no notice and no severance, because the whole company suddenly went under.

One day we were busily producing and the next, I got a phone call from the CEO saying our NSF funding, which had made up more than 60% of our budget-- had been suddenly withdrawn, guaranteeing bankruptcy, and that we would be paid "through yesterday."

I can't pretend to know financial details that may have played a role in the agency's sudden decision to pull the plug, but I know this: ScienCentral News was able to produce 5 science news stories a week, on deadline, on an annual budget about the size of one PBS documentary production. It was the only truly independent organization of its kind, and despite its shoestring budget, it covered science news better than any other science video news outlet no matter how you define "better.

The amount of the grant that would have keep us going another 3 years was probably on the order of $2 million. I would like to see any other project create a dozen professional jobs putting out such a value-added product for that kind of money.

One of the ways ScienCentral did that was to allow a couple of its most experienced employees to telecommute, like I did from my home in Oswego County. So they were able to pay me a good wage by CNY standards that was much less than they would have needed to pay me to be located in Manhattan where the newsroom was based.

Which is why I'm so out of luck now-- there's not much call for what I do in this neck o the woods, even without the worst recession most of us have ever seen. But with all of journalism shrinking and what's left of it in a persistent state of devaluation, I am in good jobless company.

I do find it amazing that after surviving 8 years of the "anti-science" Bush administration, the funding such a pro-science project was yanked under the administration that's supposedly about restoring science to its rightful place

Meanwhile, plenty of companies that made huge financial mistakes were being rescued because they were TBTF.

ScienCentral was far from TBTF, and sadly, it will probably not be terribly missed because it's not the job of viewers to notice the difference.