NOTEBOOK: An implausible trivia team

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A murder of crows, a flock of sheep, a herd of deer, an implausibility of … what? 

That was one of just a few trivia questions on Tuesday night that stumped me, my colleague Perry Beeman (now the Business Record’s managing editor but an environmental reporter for years), and our team of area scientists and researchers, all gathered together at the Des Moines Social Club for a mixer between the local scientific and journalistic community. The questions ranged from things I could never calculate (“how many CVS receipts would it take to reach the moon?” I’ve forgotten already.) to a few things I plausibly knew (“what was the White House Press Briefing Room originally used for?” A swimming pool!).

The event was organized by SciLine, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., trying to bridge the gap between shrinking, generalized newsrooms across the U.S. and scientific experts who reporters need for quality sourcing and science stories. The breakdown between scientists and media has caused a lot of hand wringing over the years, as reporters untrained in “science reading” try to decipher press releases written by scientists or departments untrained in media communication. That breakdown is how you get the back-and-forth every few years on whether red wine is good or bad for your overall health. 

Nationally, media used to have dedicated reporters who spent years getting to know a niche field of health care, higher education, or space; as those newsrooms shrink, it’s going to take a bigger effort to make connections between general reporters on a deadline and real experts who can shed some perspective. 

In the meantime, it’s an implausibility of wildebeests, and no, our biology friends on the team didn’t get that answer right either. The more you know!