ABOUT BETSY MASON

Betsy is a freelance science journalist and editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a 2022 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow reporting on how the science of animal minds is changing how we think about us and them.

Betsy is coauthor with Greg Miller of All Over the Map, an illustrated book about maps and cartography for National Geographic, and the cartography website Map Dragons. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including National Geographic, The New York Times, Science, Nature, WIRED, Science News, Scientific American, Outside, Discover, Knowable, and New Scientist.

Betsy was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2015-2016. Previously she was senior editor at WIRED in charge of online science coverage from 2008 to 2015. She has worked as the science and national laboratories reporter at the Contra Costa Times where she won the American Geophysical Union’s David Perlman award for breaking news for her coverage of earthquake risk in the Bay Area.

She has a master’s degree in geology from Stanford University and is a graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. She serves as secretary of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

Coverage areas of particular interest include animal cognition and behavior, neuroscience, language, cartography, earth sciences, remote sensing and satellite imagery, climate, environment, data visualization, philosophy of science, and science history.