Site (minus news) Online!

Next meeting: Wednesday Dec 2. Ill nominally set it for 3pm, but would people prefer a bit later, say 5pm?
We now have roll-out dates for the January front page stories, all which will appear at a weekly interval, on Sat afternoon.

Jan 2: Breaking Barriers Meet preview
Jan 9: Bioinformatics Meet preview
Jan 16: Narlikar Interview
Jan 23: Molecular Motors preview
Jan 30: The Wlldlife Success Story continues

Those involved in writing the text for these stories, please send me latest drafts tomorrow, Monday at the v latest. Shova has been working very hard on the graphics side of things, an has them under control. Vijay and Upi have granted Shova permission to adapt the main portal page's color scheme to match the front page graphic of the week. Should make for an exciting fresh look!

This will cover us beyond my Jan 27 return date, and hopefully the Season Watch story could come together for Feb 6?
We also have some interesting "page 2" stories shaping up
- the Spanish Connection (TV crew documents Eva in the lab; Sarita
- Reunion in India Story - from Sowdhamini's lab (Shameer)

Rajesh from computing has found an absolutely amazing and free News Site management system, called ProsePoint, and so already the NCBS news Site (minus any stories) is online!!
NCBS news You can click on one of the fake sample stories to see what an individual story page would look like.

Prposepoint is extraordinarily powerful so myself and rajesh are reading through the documentation to see how to work with it, and add in NCBS's existing News content to this. Prosepoint Documentation

It would be great if someone from the team could assume responsibility for doing some minor weekly refreshments to the main news page during January. Please contact me if you are, and we will get together on Tuesday (at latest) for a chat.

NewzTeam Meet Nov 25

The following stories are in progress:
Narlikar thinks out of the Box;Vinodh, Manish: Draft in, Graphic needed
Preview of Molecular Motors Conf: Prabhat, Sucheta: Interview complete, Graphic needed
Bioinformatic Conf Preview: Geoff: Draft in, Graphic Complete
Update on Wildlife Program: Geoff: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Art Science Fusion: Sarita: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Kaustubh's War on Pollution: Shikha: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Breaking Barriers Preview: Nisha: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
India Tackles the Brain Drain: Geoff: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Migrant Watch Member Watch: Uttara: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Sanjeev Jhayan (NIMHANS) Interview: ?:

Latest on Website Templates: Geoff, Rajesh, Shova
1. Main portal page: OK
2. Single story page: Easy to do
3. Main News Page: More to do
- Rajesh has pinpointed suitable source of Drupal templates
- http://demo.prosepoint.org/
Need to:
1. Finalise a clustering system for stories: Geoff
2. Find someone willing to update once a week

Video Online: Geoff, Avinash: Long way to go!
* Bandwidth vs Quality Issues
-From NCBS and end-users points of view
* Vimeo?
* Security Issues

Social Media
VijayRhagavan supports idea of Facebook, Twitter: Takers?

Shova's Mega-Improved Version

Draft of Bioinformatics Graphic

I've been working on a graphic for a preview story for the Bioinformatics conference, and have attached a copy of our current front page with it inserted to give everyone a chance to see what we are aiming at.

Shova made the very good point that anything added cant result in a graphic horrorshow, so in this case Ive gone for a fairly harmonious color scheme. MIT changes their entire front page color scheme based on theday's new graphic! Something to think of for down the track, but in the meantime we can:
(1) try to make the graphic fit the existing scheme
(2) if any graphic cant be shoehorned into existing scheme, perhaps change the color of a few features (eg "About Us" etc boxes) when needed (thanks Shova).
All feedback is good!
geoff

Top science journo Seema Singh at next meet

Seema Singh, who writes science stories for the Times of India, and a science blog for the Wall Street Journal, will give us a crash course in science journalism in our very next meet, Wednesday, Nov 25. She will be here at 3.30pm, so we will kick off at 3pm to cover the other stuff before she arrives. Below are some links to her blog, stories etc. For some weird reason the rendering of the Times stories completely removes the upper case and paragraphing - don't emulate these particular features in your own stories!

Her WSJ Blog
Siddiqui Story
Infertility Story
Mini-Bio

Welcome Shova, Graphics Consultant

Shovamayee Maharana from Shiva's lab will generously provide the benefit of her artistic flair to anyone who needs help with the graphics for each story. I have updated her about the stories in progress, so she might approach those involved. She will also consult with Rajesh from computing about the design aspects of the web-page modifications.

News-writing tips from my ex-journo brother

"As you probably know, there is a major difference between journalese and creative writing, the latter being much more descriptive.
My understanding is that journalese is a concise description of the facts of what happened, or will happen, to who, where, why, when and how.
Use active voice, never ever passive.
Avoid tautology.
Avoid overuse of commas etc, keep them to a minimum, short sentences make that easier.
Therefore, use short sentences.
One adjective usually suffices, no flowery language.
No opinion is offered, "just give me the facts!".
The opinions used are those of the person interviewed, not the journo. This is different in "opinion pieces" - e.g. column writers in newpapers and mags.

Quotes are very good to use, so it's good to interview subject and quote him/her, they are the authority, not the writer.

format for quotes -
Tom Jones said, "One, two, three". don't use Mr.
If Jones was a professor you'd introduce him as such rather than use his title.
e.g. The Professor of Biology at XYZ Uni, Tom Jones said, "One, two three".
or - Tom Jones, professor of biology at XYZ Uni said, "....

after that use -
"He fell over", Jones said.

You don't use any fancy language, simply use "said". After first intro of person, use surname only, no titles after that.

Keep language simple, don't use a big word when a small one will do."

Some examples of news stories that follow most of these suggestions:

Maharishi University story
MIT story

NCBS Newz Team Meets

The Team
Uttara, P. Chitra, Sathya Srinivasan, Rahjesh, Shikha Sahlawat, Nisha Ramdas, Ishier Raote, Prabhat Tiwari, Vinodh Ilangovan, Anupama Ashok, Manish Sharma, Shovamayee Maharana, Mrinalini Puranik, Suhel Quader, Geoff Hyde

What happened
Geoff gave an overview of the expansion of NCBS's web-based news, covering such ideas as:

(1) Main Mission: to introduce what happens here to a broader audience. Suhel proposed a wider vision, that NCBS could serve as a portal for the coverage of Indian science generally.

(2) Long-term goals: to set up a rich, dynamic news site similar to that of MIT. Lots of suggestions from the audience indicated that ours could be even richer! But much of that will probably await the procurement of dedicated News staff.

There were many great ideas put forward including:

• Getting the videos of the many great talks that have occurred at NCBS online
• Covering the many artistic events at NCBS
• Conference previews and reports
• Vijay's Thoughts of the Month: a Blog
  
• Favourite Science of the Week
• The Student Perspective
• Cartoons
• Using Social Media such as Blogs, Facebook and Twitter
• Opinion Pieces aka Rants
• Spoof Articles
• An alumni database that could feed in stories about exploits of past NCBS'ians
• Reports on exhibitions at NCBS, or any other events that allow for interactions with the general public.
  

(3) Short Terms Goals

• To quickly generate, before Dec 5, a small bank of 5 or more reasonably topical "front-page" stories that could appear at regular intervals on the main NCBS page, starting January 2010. The associated graphic for each story could take over most of the area currently dedicated to the list of news items (most of which would be shifted to another page).
• To prepare a new template for each fully-fleshed out story, and prepare the NCBS main page to accommodate the new content.

Going Forward

The following stories are in progress:

• Preview of Molecular Motors: Prabhat
  
• Migrant Watch Member Watch: Uttara
• Narlikar vs the Institute Model: Vinodh, Manish
• Kaustubh's War on Pollution: Shikha
• Breaking Barriers Preview: Nisha
• India Tackles the Brain Drain: Geoff
• Art Science Fusion: Sarita
  
• Sanjeev Jhayan (NIMHANS) Interview: ?

Email your draft stories and pictures to me and I will start on the editing. If you want I can post the drafts and my suggestions to this blog so that other people can also make comments. I forgot to emphasise in the meeting that each story should have an associated interesting graphic of some kind. This could be something already existing (e.g. from a conference poster/advertisement) or something new. If you need the assistance of a professional photographer, that can be arranged of course.

Please attempt to have something ready in time for the next meeting.

Next Meeting
Same time next week, i.e. Wednesday, Nov 25, 2.30pm, probably same place (S01).

There are hundreds of sites with tips on news writing. I have not found any comprehensive ones yet though. Each of the sites below have some nugget of good information, and the last one discusses the link between science blogs and reporting in the mainstream print media.

1. Inverted Pyramid: How to Write for Social News & Blogs

2. Freelancing News Articles: How to Write News Articles

3. How to Write a Good News Story or Blog Posting

4. How to Write a Newspaper Article Quickly and Easily!

5. How to Write News Stories

6. How to Write Newspaper Headlines: Part 1: How to Write News Articles

7. How to Write Newspaper Headlines: Part 2: How to Write News Articles

8. News Writing - The Basics of News Writing

9. Science journalism: Supplanting the old media?