Ron Winslow has spent the last quarter century chronicling the most important health news—from the latest cancer research to questions about medical ethics—for Wall Street Journal readers.
Winslow will talk about “Covering Science: Worst of Times, Best of Times” when he delivers the annual Alfred and Julia Hill Lecture on March 11 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The event, which begins at 8:00 p.m. in the McClung Museum Auditorium, is free and open to the public.
“I’m concerned,” Winslow said, “about the challenges science writers face from declining staff positions, disruptions in conventional news media, and science denial in much of the population. Yet I’m encouraged by the opportunities offered by blogs and other new media opportunities and by the incredible pace of discovery across science, but especially in medicine.”
Over the past twenty-five years, Winslow has published more than 1,400 articles in the Wall Street Journal. The East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists said he “is considered by many reporters, editors, scientists and readers to be the current dean of medical writing.”
Winslow won the 2011 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. One of the judges noted, “When I read a Ron Winslow story, I know I’m in completely trustworthy hands.”
A Wall Street Journal bureau chief who nominated him for the honor called Winslow “a singular journalist whose contributions to the public’s understanding of medical science are unmatched…. It is only someone with Ron’s keen eye for detail and innate sense of story who could weave science, personal narratives, and broad economic context into the kind of story that makes even the arcane world of clinical trial protocols compelling to the layman.”
And an Associated Press colleague noted, “He’s also got a keen eye for the quirky story—that good read you just can’t resist.”
Winslow also received the Howard Lewis Award for career achievement in medical reporting from the American Heart Association in 2003, and his writing has been honored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness and other groups.
A graduate of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, Winslow began his journalism career about forty years ago as a reporter for Rhode Island’s Providence Journal. He later taught English and journalism at the University of New Hampshire while freelancing for the New York Times and Boston Globe magazines and other publications. He joined the Wall Street Journal in 1983 to report on electric utilities and nuclear power. Two years later he was named assistant national news editor in charge of the paper’s science and energy section, and a few months later he became news editor. He returned to reporting as a senior special writer covering health care and medicine in 1989. He subsequently served as health and science news editor of the paper and was appointed deputy bureau chief for health and science in 2008.
This is the twenty-second annual Hill lecture. The series, which brings distinguished science journalists to campus, is supported by an endowment created by Tom Hill and Mary Frances Hill Holton in honor of their parents, Alfred and Julia Hill, founders of the Oak Ridger. The Hill family’s endowment of the lecture series was a gift to the UT School of Journalism and Electronic Media in the College of Communication and Information.
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C O N T A C T :
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)