With science journalism in retreat, universities try new strategy for informing the public

Concerned that journalism’s economic problems are reducing Americans’ understanding of science, medicine and other research, 35 of the nation’s top universities — including Stanford and UC-Berkeley — on Tuesday announced they will feed their own accounts of their discoveries directly to top news sites on the Internet.

Under the plan, the universities have formed what is essentially their own nonprofit wire service, called Futurity http://futurity.org/ , to provide articles to popular Web sites such as Yahoo News and Google News, along with MySpace and Twitter.

"We’ve been really concerned. Our preference would be to have the level of coverage of science and research that we enjoyed for decades," said Lisa Lapin, assistant vice president for university communications at Stanford.

By Paul Rogers

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