A new secretary general for the Swiss Club for Science Journalism

Since its foundation, the association has been managed by a multi-member board. Most of its members are journalists, representing the most important media in Switzerland. The board organizes various training courses and seminars every year, maintains a website, publishes a newsletter and maintains a network of around 350 members, half of whom are active science journalists (editorial staff or freelancers) and the other half science communicators.

However, in these times of great upheaval in the media landscape, journalists - including those working for the SKWJ - have to devote a large part of their time and energy to keeping an eye on developments in their profession. The Board therefore felt it would be more appropriate and efficient to professionalize the club's structures and place the management under the responsibility of a Secretary General.

Following a job advertisement to which various members responded, Christine D'Anna-Huber has been elected as the new Secretary General. The multilingual journalist from Bern has worked for various Swiss print media and radio stations for around 20 years, including as a correspondent for French-speaking Switzerland and Africa correspondent for the Tages-Anzeiger.

Since 2010, she has been running her own copywriting agency, which specializes in communicating complex scientific and technical content in an understandable way. Her clients include the Foundation for Technology Assessment (TA-Swiss), the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Christine D'Anna-Huber was introduced to the members at the General Assembly on June 15, 2017 and took up her position on the same day. Her responsibilities include the association secretariat, contact with members and advertisers, cash management and association accounting, maintaining the website, social media presence, sending out the SKWJ newsletter and preparing the board meetings.

Candidacy World Conference of Science Journalism

Her appointment comes at an intense time for the SKWJ. After the complete revision of its website Science-journalism.ch - whose new look also includes its own internal social media platform for exchanges between the 350 members - and after a study trip to Jordan, the club is currently putting the finishing touches to its candidacy to host the World Conference of Science Journalism (WCSJ) in Lausanne at the beginning of July 2019.

The project, launched in collaboration with its sister organizations in France (Association des journalistes scientifiques de la presse d'information, AJSPI) and Italy (Science Writers in Italy SWIM), aims to bring the World Conference of Science Journalism - and with it around 1200 science journalists from media around the world - to the SwissTech Convention Center at EPFL for a week-long event with debates, workshops and laboratory visits. The bid, supported by EPFL, CERN, the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva, local authorities and numerous Swiss media, will be presented at the next World Conference in San Francisco on October 26. The winner of the bid will be announced on October 28.