Sadie Witkowski

Top Five AAAS Mass Media Fellow Articles
Sadie Witkowski

Sadie Witkowski was a 2018 AAAS Mass Media Fellow who was sponsored by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. During the course of the 10 week fellowship, Ms. Witkowski published 20 articles for the Voice of America

Read Learning the Ropes of Science Journalism:  A Conversation with the 2018 AAAS Mass Media Fellows.

The following are her top five stories from the experience:

"My most recent favorite is a story about microbes eating into garnets, specifically single cell yeast….It's interesting because it tells you something about the local economy. Their gemstones aren't worth as much because of this damage. But it also tells us something about what life might be like on Mars. It might be these kinds of single cell microbes and it's good to have a sense of the kinds of sources we should be looking for." 

"I did a two-part series about the biology of vaccines and how they work, what we can vaccinate against, what we can't. What happens if you don't vaccinate. And then I did a second part that was the psychology of vaccines, because I'm in psychology I wanted to remind everyone that we all have cognitive biases and that no one is a computer, no one thinks perfectly logically and its interesting to see how logic breaks down with certain belief structures."

“The only video story that I got to shoot all the footage…was going to Ashburn, VA and visiting Lost Rhino, and talking with them about how important yeast is for beer and the fact that it's always been an ingredient that at least ancient people didn't even know was an ingredient. I covered some about the history of beer and how yeast can kind of come from wherever and you can use wild yeasts and some of the dangers. I felt like I got a hand in pitching it, filming it, writing it, producing it, and I really got to see it all the way through. So I am very proud of that.”

“I wrote a story on arctic shipping traffic and how because there's ice melting in the arctic, more shipping lanes are opening up and it's putting a lot of marine mammals at risk. The study compared different species based on their vulnerability to ships and their exposure to these ships. I was excited because there's narwhals in it, and I'm like yes, I will cover the unicorns of the sea!”