Alexandra Witze was awarded the 2019 Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 11 December 2019 in San Francisco, Calif. The award is given “for recognition of a journalist or team of journalists who have made significant, lasting, and consistent contributions to accurate reporting on the Earth and space sciences for the general public.”  

Alex Witze has been writing about Earth science for nearly 25 years at major newspapers and magazines and as a book author. With her deft, lively style and great depth of expertise, she is one of the finest science writers working today.

Witze’s writing skillfully marries the technical aspects of geoscience with the human experience of living on a volatile planet. This is clear in her heartbreaking Nature story on how scientists missed the warning signs of seismic dangers in western China prior to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and in her article on the increasing incidence of extreme rain events in a warming world and their societal impacts.

A pillar of the broader science writing community, Witze serves on the board of directors and as treasurer of the National Association of Science Writers. She also sits on the board of The Open Notebook, an indispensable online resource for science journalists.

Witze began her career at Earth magazine and quickly moved to the Dallas Morning News, which sent her around the world to cover geoscience research. She traveled to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to cover the Mars Pathfinder landing and to the North Pole to report on climate science. In 2000, Witze won AGU’s Walter Sullivan Award for her Dallas Morning News story on an ocean drilling expedition that explored the Kerguelen Plateau.

In 2005, Witze became a correspondent at Nature, where she has held down the Earth science beat ever since. Her work has also appeared in Knowable Magazine, Air & Space, and Science News. In 2014, she published Island on Fire, about the 1783 eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki, which altered the course of human history.

The book, cowritten with her husband, Jeff Kanipe, was short-listed for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Witze’s work has won accolades from many leading science organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Astronomical Society.

In 2016, she won AGU’s Perlman Award for her story on induced seismicity in Oklahoma. She is the only writer to have received both the Perlman and Sullivan Awards and now the Cowen Award—which honors her long and ongoing legacy.

—Julia Rosen, The Los Angeles Times, Portland, Ore.

I’m so pleased to accept AGU’s Cowen Award. Many, many thanks to Julia Rosen—a science writer of the highest caliber—for the nomination. And it was a thrill to get an email from Bob Cowen himself when the announcement went public. The fact that AGU acknowledges lifetime achievement in this area means a lot. For so many writers, our jobs consist of an endless search to unearth untold stories and bring those to a wide audience. Much of this work is exhilarating, such as when we have the opportunity to cover pathbreaking discoveries and report stories that end up in the history books. Much of the rest is not, such as when we need to illuminate the systemic factors that have prevented many scientists from performing to their fullest potential. Science journalism is a niche profession and one that has struggled in recent years. I’ve been in this field long enough to see many traditional journalistic outlets close up shop. Some new ones have launched, but there’s no question that journalism in the United States is facing an existential threat. In an era where reporters are belittled and jeered for doing their jobs, it’s heartening to see AGU continue to highlight the importance of accurate and insightful journalism. Over the years I’ve worked with too many excellent colleagues to name them all here. I’m grateful for my professional community and the opportunity to keep working in this field even as it evolves. Thank you also to all the scientists who have taken my calls, answered my emails, and allowed me to tag along in the field with them. Most of all I’m grateful for my husband, Jeff Kanipe, whose love and support have made all our joint and individual science-writing work possible. —Alexandra Witze, Freelance Writer

Alexandra Witze received the 2016 David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism–News at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 14 December 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. The award recognizes “a journalist for a news story or series in any medium except books that makes information about the Earth and space sciences accessible and interesting to the general public.”  

It’s not exactly a secret that Alex Witze has a thing for the most restless parts of the planet. She and her husband, Jeff Kanipe, toiled for several years and spent part of their savings to trek around Iceland to research their book Island on Fire, which describes the great Laki eruption of 1783. For Nature, Alex has reported from the site of the devastating Wenchuan earthquake in China, headed into the Pacific on a ship to learn about undersea volcanoes, and shadowed the seismologists who track earthquakes across the world.

In early 2015, Alex decided she wanted to write about a different kind of instability: earthquakes triggered by humans. Oklahoma and Texas had been hit by increasing numbers of earthquake swarms, and seismologists had accumulating evidence that this activity was caused by the injection of wastewater into deep rock formations, typically as a ­by-­product of oil and gas production. Seismologists were set to explore this issue at a Seismological Society of America meeting in April, and Alex decided the time was right for a story.

But unlike many reporters, who might focus on the latest study, Alex decided to write a broader story by touring Oklahoma, the epicenter of this seismic activity. She drove 10 hours from her home to visit with some of the Oklahoma researchers who would soon present their data to the seismological meeting. She went to a town hall gathering, where residents, scientists, and state regulators talked about the issue that was threatening their livelihoods and lives. She explored the brick architecture and gas pipelines that were not built to withstand strong quakes. She also took care to show how important the oil and gas industry has been to Oklahoma and how everybody has struggled to manage a risk associated with a key source of revenue.

Then, after a marathon drive back home, Alex quickly wrote a beautiful story with her trademark efficiency. What makes this story stand out is that Alex used the opportunity of the scientific meeting to investigate how the results of research fit into a complex public discussion that is roiling a state. Her superb instincts were prescient. In September, Oklahoma suffered one of the strongest quakes in state history, forcing regulators to shut down fluid injection wells in the region. For anyone wanting to understand the issue, Alex’s ­award-­winning story would be an excellent place to start.

—Rich Monastersky, Nature Magazine, Washington, D. C.

I’m honored to receive AGU’s award for news reporting, which is named after David Perlman, the science editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, who has been an inspiration throughout my career. Dave’s hardworking, hard-nosed journalism, which he has practiced since the 1950s, is a model for any reporter in any decade. Thanks to Lauren Morello for deftly editing the story, to Matt Crenson for commissioning it, and to Rich Monastersky for writing the citation. I would like to thank my husband, Jeff Kanipe, above all. He did not blink when I said we should go to Oklahoma to report on induced seismicity, and he suggested lines of reporting and places to visit that enhanced the final piece. Both of us, however, missed the moderate earthquake we should have felt on the trip: I was walking across the campus of Oklahoma State University when it happened and he was in the car, both of us insulated from ground movement by our own motions. Jeff’s personal and professional support has enabled so much of what I have been able to accomplish, for which I am eternally grateful. —Alexandra Witze, Nature Magazine, Boulder, Colo.

Alexandra Witze was awarded the 2000 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism at the AGU Spring Meeting Honors Ceremony, which was held on June 2, 2000, in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes a single article or a radio/television report that makes geophysical material accessible and interesting to the general public.  

“‘Paradise Submerged,’ an account of a sunken plateau in the Indian Ocean mimicking the legend of Atlantis, has earned writer Alexandra Witze the 2000 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism.

“It is most fitting and proper that Alexandra Witze should be honored for her excellence in writing on the Earth sciences, for she is a gem. Her writing has sparkled since her first days as a science writing intern in Dallas 7 years ago.

“From the outset of her career, Alex has brightened the lives of her science journalism colleagues with her enthusiasm and energy, intelligence and insight. Now an accomplished veteran at age 29, she outshines many writers much older, combining clarity with verve in presenting the wonders of the geophysical world to the half a million subscribers of The Dallas Morning News.

“The foundation for her endeavor is solid—an Earth and planetary science degree from MIT, a master’s certification in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz, 2 years as an editor at the now defunct, but once lively, magazine Earth. On that foundation she has built a record of superior reporting on science around, outside, and inside the world. She has brought to readers of The News vivid accounts of probes in deep space, comet collisions with Jupiter, rocks and rovers on Mars, as well as engaging glimpses into the scientific secrets of the Earth—from dinosaur fossils and the inner working of earthquakes to the archaeology of brothels and the science of precious gems.

“She has also guided readers on tours of the life and land beneath the sea, most entertainingly in the journey to the submerged Kerguelen Plateau—‘a remote island, covered by a lush forest inhabited by fantastic creatures,’ wrote Alex. ‘But don’t call a travel agent yet,’ she warned. The island paradise of Kerguelen ‘vanished millions of years ago, beneath the waves of the Indian Ocean.’

“The only Kerguelen vacationers today are the scientists who study this lost land, now ‘visible only where its highest mountains jut above sea level.’ Alex went on to report the secrets that the scientific vacationers seek, ranging from the history of the Indian Ocean to patterns of ancient animal migrations to the dangers of explosive basaltic eruptions. In describing Kerguelen research and its implications, Alex brought her readers face to face with the excitement of exploration and discovery. That’s the sort of thing that science writers are supposed to do, and Alex does it superbly.

“Her award for this article honors excellent work on a specific story, but this recognition should echo as a well deserved acknowledgment of her career in its entirety. She is a paragon of what is best not only in science journalism, but in journalism of all sorts, and her work demonstrates a consistent dedication to presenting readers the new, the interesting, and the important, with accuracy, sophistication, and flair.”

—TOM SIEGFRIED, Science Editor, The Dallas Morning News, Tex.

I am thrilled to accept this award from the American Geophysical Union, an award associated with the names of two early influences on my science journalism career. “Walter Sullivan, for whom this award is named, is an icon in the science writing world. I met him briefly, at my very first AGU Meeting where he made an appearance in the press room. I think I worked up the nerve to tell him how I had just finished Continents in Motion, his book on the development of plate tectonics theory. Talking to him seemed almost as monumental as talking to scientists, who seemed remote and inaccessible to a fledgling science writer. “John McPhee, who received this award in 1993, is most likely a familiar name to this gathering. My bookshelves, probably like yours, have long been packed with McPhee’s geology books. Like no one else, he showed how it is possible to wax poetic about olivine and ophiolites. It is an honor to be in his company, and that of the other award recipients. “While I worked on the Kerguelen Plateau story, my editors in Dallas, Tom Siegfried and Karen Patterson, provided encouragement, writing tutorials, and constant advice on transitions. Jeff Kanipe has always been a loving source of moral support. “I learned long ago that scientists are not as inaccessible as they can initially appear. My story would not have been possible without the generous help of Mike Coffin and Fred Frey, co-chief scientists of Ocean Drilling Program Leg 183, and the ODP support staff at Texas A & M. These researchers gave me a virtual tour of Kerguelen, in lieu of an actual trip to a lost continent. Thanks to the American Geophysical Union and its scientists for providing an endless source of rich material for us journalists to write about.” —ALEXANDRA WITZE, The Dallas Morning News, Tex.