James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award For Interpreting Chemistry For The Public

This year’s award winner began his career covering “kids and cops”—the traditional beat for a rookie reporter at a daily newspaper—at the Champaign-Urbana Courier, in Urbana, Ill. But Ron Seely’s penchant for investigative journalism would eventually take him to the science desk at the Wisconsin State Journal, where for more than 25 years he has honed the craft of communicating the complexities of science to the readers of a daily 
newspaper.

Seely, who has a degree in journalism from Northern Illinois University, writes for a well-educated readership: The paper serves several university communities, including that of the University of Wisconsin. The paper also serves farm communities, and Seely’s science reporting can be traced back to his early coverage of agriculture. The inherent link between science and the community’s business and environmental concerns broadened Seely’s coverage of science as a topic of general community interest.

“There is science behind every headline in the paper,” Seely says. Getting the science into the headline, however, is not always easy. Over the course of his career, Seely has seen editorial emphases change and has at times had to fight to keep science as a distinct beat at the Journal.

He has also had to manage tensions between the science community and the press, dealing with long-standing reticence on the part of scientists to discuss their work with the public. But this tension has dissipated considerably in recent years, according to Seely.

“The pressure on scientists today to talk about what they do and to communicate to a general audience is greater than ever,” he says, noting that issues ranging from environmental management to health care hinge on breakthrough science.

Seely attributes headway in researcher-reporter relations to the persistence of journalists who, like himself, come at science with degrees in subjects such as journalism, history, or English literature. “Because I don’t come from a science background, I have to work very hard to make sure I understand what I’m covering,” he says. “Still, I never have trouble finding scientists who want to talk about what they do.”

This access accrues partly from the trust and respect Seely has established with scientists over the years. “He has a real talent for going into someone’s laboratory and listening,” says Phillip R. Certain, dean emeritus of the College of Letters & Science and professor of chemistry emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where for the past 15 years Seely has lectured on science writing. Seely has a gift for taking information that would be accessible only to scientists and “making the final leap from there to something that anyone would understand,” Certain says.

James F. Crow, professor emeritus of genetics at Wisconsin agrees. “I believe he has an unusual gift for taking a complicated subject and simplifying it without distortion,” Crow says. “This is a rare trait.”

Seely will present the award address at an invitation-only event being planned by the ACS Office of Communications.