With the idea to foster, promote and nurture independant science journalism globally, I launched the idea in 2013 to bring to Lausanne, Switzerland, the World Conference of Science Journalists, which gets together participants from about 70 countries every second year. Then, I led the whole project.
“Reaching new heights in science journalism” was the motto of the 11th World Conference of Science Journalists in Lausanne. This promise has been fulfilled in many ways. We could mention here the overall number of registrants: 1360, almost the same as the 1365 for WCSJ2017 in San Francisco. The high overall participation of female participants at 59% is another thing we’re proud of, as is the budget we were able to secure, which was the highest ever for a WCSJ. That allows me to cite one more figure we are proud of: having been able to offer 110 travel fellowships to science journalists coming mainly from developing countries.
A very attractive and diverse core-program
The success of WCSJ2019 was largely due to a very attractive and diverse core-program, complemented by enriching field trips and lab visits, as well as interesting pre-event workshops. All these programme items and sessions, some of which benefited from simultaneous English-French translation – another first – allowed each participant to open their mind to new ideas, engage in rewarding discussions, make the most of best practice from other colleagues, take part in lively debates and discover fascinating science. These were the most intangible but important achievements of this conference.
Some distinguished guests
It would have been a pity to keep such accomplishments to ourselves, behind the doors of the stunning WCSJ2019 venue, the SwissTech Conference Center. Therefore, we made sure that some distinguished guests were able to join us. During the Opening ceremony on Monday 1 July 2019, we were honoured to welcome high-level politicians and decision-makers, including Simonetta Sommaruga, vice-president of the Swiss Federal Council, Frédérique Vidal, French Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, and Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation. In their vibrant speeches not only did they underline the importance of science in our societies, but they also praised the role science journalists play in giving it context. The fact that they so vigorously made our message theirs – the need to foster independent and quality science journalism throughout the world – is for us one the highlights of this conference.
Fruitful collaborations
This worldwide event was made possible thanks to the financial support of 101 different entities, always in full respect of the independence guidelines set to keep the conference and its core-content as free of external influence and as open as possible. We would like to thank them all for their fruitful collaboration.
A tri-national symbol
Last but not least, we organised this conference under the umbrella-name of the Alpine Consortium, uniting the science journalists associations of our three countries, Switzerland, France and Italy, totaling about 700 individual members. Their representatives worked hard together on this immense project, sharing their passion and pooling their strengths to reach the goal: just as we did in August 2017 during the bidding process for the conference, when we climbed together to the summit of Mont Dolent, the exact meeting point of the Swiss, French and Italian borders, as a symbol of our common efforts to organise a memorable WCSJ in Lausanne.
To present the event at the bidding competition ceremony, we shot this video:
–> The Full programme of the WCSJ2019 is here. Most of the sessions are still available on the WCSJ2019 YouTube channel.
–> The official website of the event is here.
–> The Final Reports can be found here.
A video summary of the highlights of this very successful event:
My role in this huge project, which I initiated, included:
- Launching and managing the whole project
- Chairing the organizing committee
- Preparing the bid for the event (–> The BidBook is here: WCSJ_2019_BidBook_FINAL)
- Securing the presence of high-level decision makers (Swiss vice-president Simonetta Sommaruga, French Minister of Education Frédérique Vidal, EU Commissioner Carlos Moedas, Swiss Secretary of State Martina Hirayama, etc.)
- Fundraising the full budget of 2,6 mio CHF, with 110 partners, including EPFL, CERN, University of Geneva, University of Lausanne, Fondation Bertarelli, and many others
- Organisation the working groups, encompassing about 40 persons in total
- Managing the outreach, communication and promotion actions
FROM THE SASJ BULLETIN, June 2019
The challenge to finance a WCSJ while maintaining content independence
The budget of the World Conference of Science Journalists in Lausanne is roughly 2.5 million Swiss francs. About 80 sponsors help us to cover some of the costs. We set them clear rules to keep our independence in shaping the conference programme.
Olivier Dessibourg
The 11th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ), to be held in Lausanne 1-5 July 2019, will very hopefully be a thrilling and inspiring event. It will be a first-class opportunity to reach many goals all at once.
First, it will show the necessity of having, in the media, a strong, independent and quality science journalism; the presence at WCSJ2019 of many decision makers from the political (Swiss government, EU), academic (major institutions of Switzerland and abroad), societal (UNESCO), philanthropic and corporate worlds will give science journalists a chance to showcase, explain and underline the importance of their job; for us, at the Swiss Association of Science Journalism, it is a perfect occasion to show how crucial and impactful science journalism is in our country.
Second, such WCSJs are great occasions to reflect on our daily activity as science journalists, share the latest updates of different scopes (media landscape, technical tools, ethical guidelines, etc.) and allow generalist journalists and students in science journalism to access to the best practices of this somehow particular field of journalism, through workshops, tutorial sessions, debates, meetings with very experienced leaders in our domain, etc.
Third, the WCSJ2019 will again be a great occasion for participants to network with colleagues from around the world, which could be useful for further work projects. This aspect will also help strengthen the building and development of national associations of science journalists.
Finally, the WCSJ2019 will be a stage for Swiss and international science to present itself under the brightest lights, and therefore for the participating journalists to get some exciting new stories to write/broadcast about.
In a nutshell, the WCSJ2019 will host 4 plenary sessions, 6 keynotes, more than 45 parallel sessions, 6 pre-event workshops, 2 full-day workshops, 6 press conferences, many private sponsored luncheons, more than 50 lab visit opportunities, more than 30 field trips in Switzerland, France, Italy but also Germany, Jordan or Russia, and various social events to network. All those program items will address one or more of the five themes:
1. State of our trade (trends in journalism, audiences, financial models, ethical questions, etc.)
2. Best practices beyond « cheerleading science » (get to know science policies, backstage of science, steps to foster role as watchdog, etc.)
3. Skills and tools (professional development)
4. Science advances and challenges (science sessions with involvement of journalists)
5. Fun and entertainment (how to deal with lighter ways to present science)
It is obvious that establishing such a rich and various program has some costs; the budget of the WCSJ2019 is set at about 2.5 million swiss francs. It is as evident that part of those costs have to be covered by external financial means; without them, the registration fee would reach an exorbitant level for each participant. Therefore, a long and challenging fundraising scheme had to be put in place to cover a large part of that budget. But we were confident to find, among the broad world of science and technology, enough entities interested in partnering with our endeavor as they would be able, through their support, to share their message. On our side, keywords for that crucial phase were: organization, diversification and regulations.
Organizing such a fundraising scheme was determinant. We first bet on our chance to put up this WCSJ2019 with our sister associations in France and Italy, showing by that that uniting our forces is a first assurance of the seriousness of our project. We then looked for the support of academic institutions which could be interested in helping host many hundreds of science journalists in the Geneva Lake region, and which could help us get visibility through their brand (we warmly thank here CERN, EPFL, Universities of Geneva and Lausanne for endorsing that role). Getting the formal support of the Swiss Government (through a letter from its president) and the regional authorities definitely set the core-basis for our fundraising actions.
The next big move was to find a first « big name » supporter, which could launch a possible «avalanche» effect: in May 2017, we signed a partnership with the Geneva-based Bertarelli Foundation, which allowed exactly this effect – we are grateful to them for that. So that we could go to San Francisco in October 2017, where we had to promote and defend our bid to host the WCSJ2019, with a secured budget of around 1 million swiss francs. This definitely was a strong asset which helped us win this bid and bring the WCSJ2019 to Lausanne.
Diversifying the fundraising scheme was crucial, in two ways. First, by presenting to the potential sponsors a list of various possibilities to partner with the WCSJ2019, from general (cash) support, to specific actions (finance the high-speed Wi-Fi, the simultaneous translations, put ads in the program, etc.), to organizing a sponsored event (luncheon, pre-event workshop, field trip, etc.). Then, by varying the profile of the supporters. We are now proud to announce that the WCSJ2019 is based on three kinds of sponsoring pillars, each of them sharing almost one third of the budget: 1. public institutions (universities, governments, etc.,), 2. foundations, and 3. corporate firms.
As a whole, the WCSJ2019 can count on the support of about 80 diverse entities. Is that too big a number? Of course, it would have been much easier and less time-consuming for us to have only two or three big sponsors supporting our event. But: these big names are much more difficult to acquire; the omnipresence of a very small number of sponsors would much more be subject to critics; the risk for the conference is greater in case they decide to «leave the boat». We therefore are very happy to present a large range of sponsors of different horizons, reducing this risk. The task to convince them certainly was much longer and complex, but advantages are many: more new contacts with interesting people, more inputs for the event, more relays to promote it.
Finally, from the beginning of the discussions with each of those supporters, we immediately set clear rules, guidelines and frameworks for our partnerships. It was obvious and non-negotiable to us that the WCSJ2019’s core-program would be established BY independent science journalists and FOR journalists from around the world. Our French colleague Yves Sciama (freelancer for LeMonde and Science&Vie) put together a Program Committee of 15 very experienced journalists, and, albeit some pressure has been put and intimidation played on that team, it managed to keep a total independence in establishing the list of the parallel sessions.
We must say today that the fundraising rules we gave ourselves were fully respected by the sponsors we partnered with so far, which obviously and nevertheless also have their own interests in trying to make the WCSJ2019 a bit their event as well. In that sense, we allowed them to be present with more involving slots, by organizing a sponsored lunch, a pre-event workshop or a press conference. Again, these items have been set according to rules we posed and will be clearly labeled as such in the general program.
Was that a right move to accept such sponsored events? One will maybe remember that some critics had been emitted regarding that issue at the occasion of the WCSJ2017 in San Francisco. As described before, it would realistically be impossible to organize such a journalism conference without financial means, provided of course the core-program is absolutely not influenced by the sponsors – which it is for WCSJ2019. Then, any journalist attending the WCSJ2019 will be able to consciously chose which item of the program he/she will attend. She/he will always be able to apply a sane criticism and judgment to any word heard, will always have the possibility to leave such sponsored event without having to produce a journalistic contribution on it if he/she decides his/her interests and the one of his/her readers is not fulfilled. To sum up, while it is the interest of WCSJ2019 participants to get in contact with major actors of the science/tech world whatever their status, their editorial independence of action will always belong to them only.
All in all, this fundraising work was a long and time-consuming task, executed by a group of up to six people at a time. This to secure the 2.5 million swiss francs budget. But it also was a very rewarding phase of the organization of the WCSJ2019, as it allowed all of us to dig into sometimes largely unknown fields of the science world and enlarge our contacts network by meeting their actors. Those interlocutors – it is important to underline – not only understood that helping set up such a conference fostering good science reporting is also in their own interest as well as in the interest of society as a whole, they also respectfully accepted the conditions we set for the partnership to be established, and the roles of each of the partner
A small cloud in this blue sky is the fact that this fundraising scheme should have involved more largely the World Federation of Science Journalists WFSJ (of which our SASJ is one of the 59 member), in order to start to establish what could become long-term relationships with international partners for upcoming WCSJ. A change in the position of Executive Director of the WFSJ, which took some time, slowed down the collaboration and prevented this wish to be fully fulfilled, the result being a Lausanne 2019 conference pretty largely supported by Swiss and French entities, which might or might not decide to renew their support for further similar worldwide events. Hopefully however, this fundraising work, and a successful WCSJ2019, will certainly set some steps to help WCSJs be really perennial.
This fundraising phase now comes to an end! This allows us, in the Organization Committee, to put all our time and energy in fine-tuning the details to set up a wonderful, interesting if not inspiring World Conference of Science Journalists. An event, of course, which you are all kindly invited not only to attend, but to actively participate in.