Updated Science Journalism training guide

I've just heard that the European Commission has issued an updated "European Guide to Science Journalism Training".

It's great the European Commission are promoting this topic - and when Patrick Vittet-Philippe spoke at the AlphaGalileo & IRCSET event in Dublin it was very clear that there is a real high-level commitment to this area.

The updated Guide is available on the Europa website and contains...

... an inventory of the training courses in science journalism across the 27 Member States of the European Union, as well as exchange programmes, scholarships and other initiatives supporting science journalism.

Several interesting trends have been indentified by the authors:

• Science Communication courses at university level are widespread.
• There is a clear recognition of the need to increase the accessibility of scientific information (for example via projects like the “Danish Science Cafés”)
• Programmes explicitly dedicated to providing formal qualifications for Science Journalism are quite rare in EU 27.
• In Eastern Europe, there are fewer formal support structures for those wishing to become a Science Journalist.
• From the information gathered, Germany and the United Kingdom seem to be among the few Member States with comprehensive approaches to science journalism training.