Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
dustry to portray chemistry as an essential and positive contributor to
American life. By agreeing to broadcasters' demands for increased atten-
tion to scientists' personalities, the radio series also helped to extend to
science the 'cult of celebrity' emerging during the 1930s.
Science Service should not, however, be assumed to have been either
a tool of the scientific elite or a public relations outfit for science and in-
dustry or a science education organization.
3
During its first two decades,
Science Service acted foremost as a news broker that sought to generate
a demand for science among mainstream newspapers, to facilitate scien-
tists' cooperation in the popularization process, and to provide
useful
sci-
entific information to 'the masses, not the classes'. The organization
played this role at a critical moment in history, when both science and
the mass media were changing dramatically. By the late 1930s, the scien-
tific community was evolving into the complex and large-scale interna-
tional research system existing today; science had earned front-page at-
tention and would soon grab even more. Advertisers and publishers were
transforming consumer expectations for communication style and con-
tent. Radio was becoming overwhelmingly commercialized and domi-
nated by drama and entertainment; the telegraphic, visual approaches of
Hollywood and magazines like
Time
,
Life
, and
Readers' Digest
were
pushing the old style of 'literary' popular science to the margins of pub-
lic desire. Science Service adjusted its own products to the changing con-
text, and gradually convinced its scientific supporters to participate in
this new marketplace for popular science.
2.
Origins: A New Institution for a Changing Market
Science Service's financial structure as a not-for-profit business corpora-
tion consistently influenced its content selections. Its limited endowment
helped to cushion tough economic times and occasional project failures,
but it was compelled to sell its news products in order to survive.
Established by a wealthy newspaper publisher, and with advisors drawn
3
This latter emphasis on science education and 'science talent searches' arose in ear-
nest only in the 1940s, a topic being explored by such historians as John Rudolph and
Sevan Terzian.
