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As the Association of British Science Writers are the shortlist for its 2011 awards, I speak to her chair, Connie St Louis, on the fate of science journalism

Last week the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) announced the shortlist for their excellent 2011th Is the reaction on Twitter you an idea of ??the contents:

@ Edyong209: Shortlist announced for the ABSW New Scientist Awards ... I mean, the ABSW Science Writers 'Award http://bit.ly/mL37mJ ;-)

@ Mjrobbins: ABSW nominees TV / Radio: the BBC, the BBC, the BBC, the BBC, the BBC and ... oh, shocking the BBC.

@ Mjrobbins: RT @ adam rutherford: It was a non-BBC on the longlist. <- That 's terrible. What can it nincompoop?

Obviously the reporters who are writing on specialist publications seem to have more time, they're weekly publications, they are edited and sub-edited so they have a lot of editorial input. They're trying to create a rigorous standard for the sort of journalism they're doing.

I have been thinking about this because I recently moved flat, which for me meant boxing and heaving several Everests of books, accumulated obsessively since I was a kid. Ask me to throw away a book, and I begin shaking like Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice and insist that I just couldn't bear to part company with it, no matter how unlikely it is I will ever read (say) a 1,000-page biography of little-known Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar.

as a good example of the blurring between journalism and science communication:

For example, you will probably remember Paul Nurse 's program, why we don' t trust scientists believe, and I, so what is the reaction of the BBC, why is there no journalist present this why we have a nice warm sociable scientists publish, "see t the investigation, what 'going on I don \ s, where' \ s of Revelation, where 's the journalist, who they say kidnapped entirely by the climate skeptics, this is a big business. [Instead 's] type,' \ re nice warm scientists, and please love us and trust us, "and I really don 'look at us, we \ t think scientists should be trusted just because they' re scientists I think they should be trusted because they have to be \ not been questioned and found wanting.

I defended a nurse 's documentary film at the time, but I know to hold their ground. I think Nurse 's voice was refreshingly free of much of the heat and the argument that the pseudo-debate about climate change, pests, but the downside is that it didn' t really under each side to make the piercing jet control. That 'is a shame because during the climate research has survived near obsessive attention to even the most casual inspection of the skeptics like Christopher Monckton, for all their brabble, it makes us really quite desperate and dishonest.

Scientists and journalists are simply too close?

I \ s-packs of packs of journalists and scientists and we all mix and we 've to Christmas parties like the Great at the Royal Society was \ where "you're all very happy and it' s because it ' s like a relatively small world.

Which all sounds very nice, but this kind of hospitality is very spectacular and journalists to undermine the other Beats, as a last famous example happened ...