Imagine learning on Monday morning that you had to write an article on an area of science you knew little about. Now imagine that the article had to be finished by Thursday morning, in print by Friday, and scrutinized by millions on the following Monday morning. If you felt a rush of adrenaline reading that scenario, then you have a sense of my fellowship experience this summer. Instead of scaling mountains or feverishly experimenting in the lab, I explored a strange new frontier: the world of science journalism. I spent ten weeks immersed in the tumult and fervor of a news organization, and now have a new appreciation for the art of science communication as well as a new sympathy for science writers that would benefit any researcher.

The fellowship I embarked on is the creation of the American Association for the Advancement of Science called a Mass Media Fellowship in Science and Engineering. AGU has been a sponsor of the program for several years, and provides funding for one of the fellowships to encourage participation by young geoscientists. The purpose of the program is to improve communication between scientists and the media by thrusting researchers into writing positions for popular media organizations. This is an extraordinary opportunity, as fellows get to jump right into writing and skip the less exciting, and often unpaid, internships that budding journalists often endure. I applied in February, and in June became a part of the science desk at U.S. News & World Report, a popular weekly news magazine that has over 2 million subscribers and about 12 million readers. The other fellows, all of whom were either working toward or had completed advanced degrees, were similarly assigned to newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations across the United States.

The first thing I learned is that the career of zxa science writer is a perpetual continuing education course. Within half an hour of arriving at my first Monday morning meeting, for example, I had been assigned a story on a new paper about pain centers in the brain. Before I could steel myself to call the researcher, though, I had been reassigned to a story on a report about the effects of low-frequency electromagnetic fields on human health. The next week I covered an article detailing the variation of women’s mate preference through the menstrual cycle, followed by xenotime dating of sedimentary rocks, a potential Alzheimer’s vaccine, the discovery of Dante’s remains in a Florence library, neuroscience of the teenage brain, fiber optic cable deployment in the United States, the science of human attraction, and forecasting of global warming.

You can imagine the trepidation that a late-stage Ph.D. student felt in tackling these topics with so little prior knowledge. Many people, including myself, have been surprised at the breadth of my “beat,” but I quickly learned that news abhors specialization. The reason scientists make good science writers is that they have a fundamental understanding of basic science, well-honed research and critical thinking skills, and, most importantly, a strong compunction to get the science right. Specialized knowledge may help a writer develop an area of expertise, but ultimately journalists need to cover late-breaking stories, regardless of subject matter. This leads to some humbling experiences, like the time I had to talk to a neuroscientist with no time to do background research, fervently hoping that he would tell me the amygdala’s exact function before I had to ask.

On the other hand, my science background was useful in recognizing important Earth science news stories. For example, I begged to cover a story on a new technique for dating sedimentary rocks. The piece might have run without my support, but certainly wouldn’t have been as ardently promoted. It made my whole summer worthwhile to hear the word “Precambrian” uttered casually by writers, editors, and artists around the magazine, and to know that 12 million people knew a little more about geology because of my story. This sort of influence, although seemingly small, is the reason I would encourage other geoscientists to participate in the program. Medical and health stories currently dominate science coverage in the popular media because they have an obvious appeal and newsworthiness. Earth science discoveries, in contrast, are often passed over because the significance to the general public is less apparent or because technical aspects of the stories make them too daunting for those without a background in the field to cover. By both encouraging well-trained scientists to enter journalism and increasing the media savvy of researchers, the Mass Media Fellows Program is a phenomenal opportunity to increase the exposure of geosciences in the mass media and educate the public about the importance of geoscience.

For researchers seeking more successful interactions with the mass media, I offer the most important lessons I learned at U.S. News:
• Avoid jargon. If you are talking to a reporter and use phrases your average 14 year-old doesn’t understand, odds are the writer will have to paraphrase you or an editor certainly will. Providing clear quotes is the best way to ensure your ideas are communicated as you intend them to be.
• Make yourself available. Reporters often have to research and report stories in hours, so calling or writing back as soon as possible is essential. Also, if you seem happy to answer endless questions you are more likely to hear from the reporter again and to have more input into the story’s development.
• Think about your work in a larger context. The average reader doesn’t care about new methods or standard deviations; he or she wants to know how this will benefit the average person.
• Communicate your confidence. Reporters often talk with economists, industry representatives, government officials, and public interest groups as well as researchers, and quotes from scientists often seem noncommittal or inconclusive when compared to other groups.
If you can express your level of certainty in terms of odds or common analogies, reporters will have something concrete to emphasize. For example, you could characterize your certainty that global warming is upon us as comparable to your belief that a) the sun will rise tomorrow, b) your kids will go to college or c) you’ll win the lottery.
• Let the writer do the writing. Writers are paid to make the subject matter interesting and clear to the public, so their style and emphasis are bound to be different than that of most researchers. Before you make objections to content, consider whether a story is actually inaccurate or just written differently than you would have written.

Since coming back to Penn State I’ve already been interviewed about my work by a budding science writer, and I can attest that my experience at U.S. News has made me a much better interviewee. I try to follow the advice above, and when I get frustrated I think about the wonderfully patient scientists who tolerated my ignorance all summer (particularly about the amygdala). And if the article about my research doesn’t get published, I’ll remember how many times I was suddenly reassigned and forced to abandon stories that I wished I could get into print, and how the researchers I interviewed good-naturedly forgave me.

I’m glad I devoted ten weeks to understanding the fickle and challenging world of news and plan to use my new skills to aid public education efforts throughout my career. In the United States, only about half of elementary school teachers and parents polled say they are “very comfortable” answering children’s science questions, federal funding for geosciences has barely kept pace with inflation over the last decade, and a state board of education recently voted to exclude evolution from its teaching standards. It’s clear that improving public science literacy would benefit both scientists and non-scientists in this country, and that better communication of science to laypeople would ameliorate disparities in science education around the world. Improved relations between scientists and the media are critical to this effort, and I warmly recommend the AAAS program as a great place to start.

Roberta Hotinski, AGU Mass Media Fellow, 1999
 

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