Conferences, Blogging, and Media

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is amending its meetings policy so that all participants who plan on blogging and tweeting adhere to the rules sets for members of the media, says a post at Science Insider. Namely, bloggers, media, and tweeters all need to notify CSHL ahead of time if they plan to cover the meeting and must receive permission from the speaker or poster author before reporting on what's presented. (Full disclosure: This change in policy has been highlighted in part due to a request from GenomeWeb for CSHL to clarify its policy on press rules.) At Daniel MacArthur's blog, Genetic Future, he and his readers discuss whether meetings should be open or closed -- MacArthur blogged from CSHL's recent Biology of Genomes meeting, which is traditionally "off the record." He calls CHSL's policy an "awkward compromise" between the goals of free reporting and discussion of unpublished work. (GenomeWeb's Editorial Director Bernadette Toner also weighed in at MacArthur's comment thread.) The question has spread and 2020Science's Andrew Maynard gives a rundown of when he thinks it's OK to blog or tweet a meeting. "I think it’s fair to say that there are probably boundaries to appropriate live-tweeting and blogging that still need to be hashed out," he writes. There is also a discussion on FriendFeed and on MacArthur's Twitter account.