A Balkan Association of Science Journalists has been launched in Novi Sad, Serbia, following a meeting in Tirana, Albania in June 2012.

The association comes after a launch of an informal Balkan Network of Science Writers after two sessions dedicated to the region’s science media at the 12th International Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PCST2012) in April 2012 in Florence, Italy.

It is also the latest move in a recent push for a greater regional networking and collaboration in science journalism in the Balkans, with the science in the media topic increasingly cropping up at policy meetings and conferences.

The association aims to join the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) and the European Union of Science Journalists’ Associations (EUSJA) and plans to set up country-chapters, as well as a regional science news service.

“The Balkan Association of Science Journalists (BASJ) is regional association of networked journalists from the Balkan’s printed and electronic media, which report and research on all scientific topics,” its website says. “Except association and networking, the mission of BASJ is strengthening mutual cooperation in international and regional projects, advocacy journalists, initiation of legal representation for journalists working in media, partnership with regional and international institutions, experts and organizations involved in science, researching and education.”

The two groupings count around twenty journalists coming from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey.

Some of the science journalism initiatives from the Balkans will be discussed at the upcoming World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ2013) in Helsinki, Finland, in June.

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Mićo Tatalović

Science journalist, news editor at Research Professional News

Mićo Tatalović is a news editor at Research Professional News. He has previously worked as a science news editor at Nature, New Scientist, and SciDev.Net. In 2018, he completed the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, US, where he researched the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in science journalism. He is also immediate former chairman of the Association of British Science Writers, and a board member of the European Federation for Science Journalism.

He runs the section Balkan Science Beat.

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