“Atlantic Transfer – Great Ideas are Mobile” – that was the topic of an international conference on science journalism in New York on October 6, 2006.  The symposium was hosted by ConRuhr, the local liaison office of the universities in the German Ruhr area. ConRuhr had organized the event together with the Department of Science Journalism of the University of Dortmund.

 

The conference program was dedicated to the question, how to reconcile good scientific practice and good journalistic praxis reaching the goal of a well-informed public. The first part of the workshop focused on the general public’s understanding and perception of science in society and how this can be improved. The second part illuminated the interaction between politics and science. Questions such as how scientific discoveries influence politics and how political decisions affect scientific development were explored. The Atlantic Transfer Conference on Science Journalism 2006 brought together science and media experts from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss these topics. The speakers represented The New York Times, Nature, Science, Der Spiegel, Scientific American, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Nova TV and WDR-Television.

 

The ConRuhr-event in New York was the second part of the conference series “Atlantic Transfer – Great Ideas are Mobile", a major initiative for German-American knowledge transfer and cooperation. The conference was supplemented with an exhibition at which the participants took the opportunity to get information about courses of study and research activities in Germany’s Ruhr Area.