Earlier this week, newspapers were abuzz with tales of scientists searching for antimicrobial chemicals in alligator blood, but few websites have bothered to embed clips from the press conference as a bonus for their most curious readers.
During the announcement, which was transmitted live from the American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans last Sunday, Professor Kermit Murray and his graduate student Lancia Darville explained their work and answered questions from reporters.
Lucky for us, they get into some of the nitty gritty of how their project works — details which would be left out of a mainstream science story.
The American Chemical Society has been on an innovation binge recently, so quite a bit of footage from the conference is available online. Although those clips are somewhat dry, it’s fun to get an unfiltered, behind the scenes, look at how research projects become fodder for the headlines.
Stuck in a print journalism mindset, many websites don’t seem to be ready for this kind of content, but I think it’s a step in the right direction — towards transparency and richer content. Perhaps the footage will be popularized by the social media community and bloggers, people who appreciate purity and technical detail, elements which are often missing from mainstream news.
Photo: poplinre / flickr
Do you think giving the public access to raw footage from conferences is a good idea, or more boring than C-Span?
