Dear Safreans,
This month I have given the Message from the Chair space to a professional body within Safrea to appeal to you to join. Read more about the South African Science Journalists Association (SASJA) below.
Stay safe, stay healthy!
Yours in freelancing,
Lynne Smit, Safrea Chair
Care about fact-based communications?
Join SASJA!
The World Health Organisation (WHO) calls it the ‘infodemic’: the barrage of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies that has flooded the world over the past twelve months, as the Covid pandemic raged.
SASJA is a special interest group within Safrea, a professional body representing science media practitioners. Part of the crucial work that a number of SASJA members have been doing in this time has been countering this flood, whether in evidence-based posts on social media, or through communicating science on conventional media platforms.
Join SASJA and be a part of making the media world a better, more evidence-based place!
We as an organisation have just held a townhall meeting and are excited about the plans we’ve plotted out for the year ahead. Webinars, podcasts, regular interactive townhall meetings, informative video clips, regular invitations to international forums, and care of the World Federation of Science Journalists; we plan to share info and tools which will help our members do their jobs as science media practitioners.
If you have an interest in and some track record of doing science journalism or communication, please do join us now! It will cost you not a bean extra if you are already a Safrea member, and it will open up a lot of opportunities.
Contact SASJA’s president, Mandi Smallhorne, on mandiwrite@icon.co.za, to apply.
And if you don’t have any experience with writing about science, but find the idea interesting, chat to SASJA about how you can get started!
Our photographer
We are featuring photographer Karen Edmonson, who is a travel and landscape photographer – capturing the different moods and atmospheres of places and creating fine art photographs for others to enjoy. Karen can be followed on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/karenedmondson/ Thank you to Karen for the use of her photographs in this newsletter.