"Science journalists help bring science to the masses"

The 11^th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) is being held in Lausanne this week, attracting some 1,200 visitors to our city. As one of the event's partner universities, EPFL is proud to be hosting the WCSJ at its SwissTech Convention Center. We spoke with Olivier Dessibourg, head of the organizing team and president of the Swiss Association of Science Journalists, about what he hopes the event will achieve. What is the WCSJ and why was it created? The WCSJ was set up by the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) to provide a forum for science journalists to discuss the state of their profession, share best practices and outline new goals to aspire to. It's held every two years and attracts over a thousand science journalists from around the world. The conference - which is run by science journalists for their peers - also aims to enable science journalists from different continents to meet each other and therefore start working together more efficiently. The conference is a hotbed of ideas! But more generally, it's an opportunity for our industry to show that we strive for independent, fact-based science journalism through a healthy critical eye, in both the specialist and mainstream press.