SciLine welcomes Matt DeRienzo as director

By Rick Weiss

In October 2017, I authored an editorial in Science magazine announcing the creation of SciLine—a new AAAS program I’d been tapped to lead, which aimed to make it easier for reporters without science backgrounds to get in touch with scientist-sources and research-backed information. This month, after seven years of extraordinary growth, SciLine is about to enter a new phase as I head into retirement and hand off the directorship to an extremely well-qualified successor, Matt DeRienzo, who starts today.

The rationale behind SciLine’s initial launch was simple: Technology has democratized the internet to such a degree that a deluge of information has muddled public understanding of the facts behind issues in the news. This has confused consumers and reporters alike and complicated policymakers’ ability to carry out evidence-based decision-making.

Fast forward seven years and the need for a service like SciLine has only become greater. The level of confusion generated on social media—in some cases inadvertently but in others intentionally—has grown significantly. Meanwhile, cash-strapped news outlets, whose shrunken newsrooms today are typically devoid of even a single science reporter, struggle to fulfill their mission to share accurate, evidence-informed and contextualized information with the public.

SciLine has become a reliable beacon of factual clarity for TV, radio and print reporters across the country, responding to more than 5,200 requests for help from reporters asking to get connected to an expert on deadline. The SciLine team of former journalists and masters-level and Ph.D. scientists has scanned the research literature to find experts with the right mix of scientific insight and communications acumen to satisfy each inquiring reporter’s needs on topics ranging from climate change to maternal health to community struggles over immigration or affordable housing. In that mediating role, we’ve helped thousands of stories include rigorously derived evidence where opinion and anecdote might otherwise have dominated.

Beyond this popular Expert Matching service, we regularly offer educational events and resources for reporters unfamiliar with scientific methods; host media briefings to introduce reporters to the science behind topics in the news; develop special content for local TV reporters to ease their inclusion of research findings in their day-today consumer coverage; and lead a variety of specialized trainings for scientists to help them understand the U.S. media ecosystem and navigate interviews more skillfully.

Over seven years, we’ve served more than 3,600 reporters at about 1,400 news organizations across all 50 states and worked directly with more than 4,000 scientists at nearly 1,000 research institutions. Along the way we expanded our philanthropic funding base and grew our staff from three to 15.

Now, under Matt’s leadership, SciLine is preparing to enter a new phase of maturity.

Matt DeRienzo

Matt was until earlier this year editor in chief at the Center for Public Integrity, the highly respected investigative journalism organization, where he oversaw CPI’s prize-winning newsroom for four years. Most recently he’s been consulting for investigative nonprofit news organizations and serving as the temporary executive editor of Lookout Santa Cruz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning digital daily.

Matt has extensive experience at practically every level of the journalistic enterprise. He served as a columnist at Editor & Publisher, the venerable monthly journalism trade publication. He’s been an advisor for the Local Media Association, the national local news cooperative that oversees the LMA Covering Climate Collaborative that SciLine is a member of. He served as vice president for News and Digital Content at Hearst Connecticut Media, where he oversaw a 180-person newsroom that fed into eight daily newspapers. And he served as executive director of Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers, a nonprofit that represents hundreds of news organizations across more than 40 states.

Matt also brings the professional credibility of a frontline worker, having been a reporter and day-to-day editor at several local outlets. And he comes with deep respect for, and journalistic experience working with, science and scientists—especially during his time in the investigative domain.

There has never been more of a need for SciLine, and I am so pleased we were able to attract Matt to the directorship at this important juncture. I hope all of you within AAAS’s scientific and journalistic communities—and the many philanthropies and donors who have supported SciLine over the years—will celebrate and support Matt in his new leadership role and help SciLine expand its founding commitment to deliver scientific expertise and context on deadline.

Rick founded SciLine in 2017 in response to changes in the journalism landscape that saw a loss of specialty science reporters from many local newsrooms and a need to help local and general assignment reporters integrate more research-backed evidence into their reporting. He has more than three decades of experience in journalism and media affairs, including 15 years as a science reporter at The Washington Post, where he wrote more than 1,000 news and feature articles about the economic, societal, and ethical implications of advances in science and technology. He has led science and technology strategic communications operations in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including within the White House and the Department of Defense. Rick earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Cornell University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.