Selling science to the media: The researcher’s view

Researchers need reporters and vice versa, but how do we strike the balance between a story that sells and a story that informs?

By definition, high-tech research pushes the limits of human understanding, and translating this into something understandable for the general public is notoriously difficult.

Sometimes journalists don’t go far enough and the story is lost in complex, stilted language. Sometimes they go too far, simplifying or promising too much about the next breakthrough in anything from healthcare to the environment.

Doing too little loses the reader; going too far raises expectations. Where there is no follow-through, this dents the credibility of researcher and reporter alike. Either approach is likely to widen the gap in understanding – and sympathy – between scientists and the general public.

So is there a third way? Diederik S. Wiersma, researcher at the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS), thinks so. While hosting young reporters for the project ‘REsearch LAbs for TEaching journalists’, he spoke to EJC Editor Howard Hudson, and gave his views on the beauty and necessity of fundamental research.

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There’s a fine line between oversell and underachievement when it comes to science journalism. How should researchers and reporters try to hook the general public?

DW: The tendency is to try to get people’s attention by explaining all the possible applications of a certain result. The risk is that the researcher being interviewed is doing whatever he can to find or invent any possible application. That may not be very realistic, but there is so much pressure to invent something and use it to capture the attention.

I have the feeling that it’s not very necessary to do that. It seems the easy way for the journalist because saying things like “this is going to cure cancer” or “this is going to make you wealthier and healthier from tomorrow onwards” is the easiest way to hook the general public. Clearly, that’s not always possible or justified.

I feel that journalists should do something more: they should try to convey the beauty of the scientific result as such. That is in order of magnitude more difficult than just inventing a couple of applications from the result. It is more about seeing the beauty of the world in which we are living, and the beauty of understanding that world.

Do you mean hooking the audience with beautiful images? Like your photograph (above) that appeared on the cover of Nature magazine?

DW: That is something that helps. That is an artistic expression of a scientific result that has both a didactic and an aesthetically appealing aspect to it. But it’s more than just the artistic beauty of something.

It is really the excitement you have if you understand your world better. The excitement you have when you look at the light emitted by stars millions and millions of years ago and which only now reaches your eye.

That is not immediately useful for curing cancer but it’s something that enriches our world and distinguishes us from animals. Animals need to find food, to reproduce and somehow survive—but we are more than that. We have cultural interests. We want to have a fuller, richer life than just bare survival.

Did you became more aware of these cultural aspects while working in Florence?

DW: No, it’s unrelated. That has always been my driving force for doing research… I always had the feeling that what I’m doing is nearer to the work of an artist than it is to the work of a normal employee.

What you’re doing is very creative, in the work itself, how you do it, and what’s behind it – which is this curiosity in trying to understand how the world works around you.

So you feel empowered by the research environment in Italy?

DW: I’m not sure if that’s the research environment in Italy in general, but it’s definitely the research environment at LENS, the lab I’m in at the moment, which is very positive and inspiring. People are very enthusiastic about what they’re doing and about sharing their results with others.

It’s a very friendly, competitive environment. So on the one hand, it’s very collaborative but on the other hand it’s a very productive environment in which people are trying to get results and working hard to make progress. It’s the main reason that I’ve stayed here so long, because I think it’s a unique combination.

Either you have a lab in which everyone is really friendly and nothing is happening or you have a place where everyone is working very hard and competing with each other and not sharing any results. Neither of the two is the right environment for doing research because in the end what you’re trying to do is to understand nature and get excited about that. The first thing you want to do is go to a colleague next door and say “look what I’ve found!” “See how this works – now we understand it!”

That works if you have that combination of enthusiasm and hard work, as sometimes it is not so easy to make any progress at all. And on the other hand, the openness and trust in each other so you can share your results without having to be paranoid about things getting stolen.

Tell us more about your own work and your strategies for getting published.

DW: The topic that our group is dealing with at LENS is photonics: how light waves behave in photonic materials. Our daily life in the lab consists of a lot of thinking, a lot of doing experiments, aligning optics and lasers and trying to get all the equipment to work. So there is a lot of time involved in getting the experiments going.

The most exciting part is, once you have some experimental results and bits and pieces of theory, when you start to sit down again together and to understand it and interpret your results. That is the added value of making a good scientific paper: you don’t simply report on what has been done and what the outcome was, but you give a deeper understanding of what that means and the physical insight that comes out of that.

That is our strategy of getting published. We don’t think all the time about getting the paper published. We try to get the insight and once you have a nice result and it is really good stuff, then you write it in a paper that’s easy to read and easy to understand. This usually gets published easily because you have written a good paper.

So it’s the opposite: we don’t think what do we have to do to get published, it’s rather “how do we get good results”? Then getting that published is automatic. Sometimes you have difficulties or misunderstandings, but that’s always resolvable.

What I really hate is repeating tiny little results or writing the same thing three or four times for different journals in a slightly different way because it’s completely useless. It’s just time lost. It would be like Rembrandt trying to make photocopies of his paintings. He wouldn’t have any satisfaction about the work.

The same approach applies to scientific as well as non-scientific publishing: for the general public, newspapers, things that are in between – like Physics Today, Scientific American – I love writing those kinds of papers because it gives you the chance to explain what you’re doing to a very broad audience.

Again this is the moment when you can try to get this excitement about nature and to somehow convey a little of that to the general public. And if you manage to do that, that’s a great satisfaction, especially if you can do it without having to oversell your results. If you do that clearly, that is when the general public sees the beauty of it.

That is what I think a journalist should try to do: try to really understand it and explain it clearly in simple terms, and then people will say “that is interesting!”.  When the baker or the butcher in my village understand my scientific results, that is when I have achieved something in journalism or scientific publishing.

You’re a Dutch researcher, working in Italy, published in the UK (Nature magazine) and USA (Physical Review Letters). What are the main differences in working with the media in these various countries?

DW: The most surprising thing is that I didn’t find such big differences. I had quite good experiences so far with journalists that wrote about our work. I always try to spend a lot of time with the journalist to talk about the results, to understand them, and once he or she has written the article, I always give feedback.

You recently visited China on business. How is the scientific landscape there compared with Europe?

DW: I went to China for just a week to teach. I didn’t have any contacts with journalists, but it was very interesting to see their very different way of working. What was very interesting to see is that the Chinese Government is investing heavily in fundamental research; so not necessarily application-driven.

Just looking at the statistics, at the moment in China it is easier to get funding for fundamental research than it is in Europe or the USA. That is completely the reverse from what we’re used to; as we’re used to seeing the Chinese copying what we are doing and not adding a lot of technology.

What they have decided is that, with their money, they should now invest in fundamental research to create the basis for technological development in their country. That is something that we have forgotten in the meantime, that we’re doing less of now in Europe and the USA. I’m very curious to see what consequences that will have in 10 years’ time…

They now understand that you have to do fundamental research to create a knowledge basis, from which the engineering can develop all kind of new technologies and devices. Of course it takes courage to do that because you are creating knowledge that is accessible to everyone. Chinese research results can be used by US engineers to develop technology, so it’s investment for the general benefit of mankind, and it’s new for China to take that approach.

They have a very different system and a lot of decisions are taken by the relatively small group of people that form the central committee. A local professor told me that the central committee had simply decided that a lot of the money that they’ve made in the economic boom should now be used to do basic research…

There may be problems due to the lack of democracy; but it’s impressive to see that the people running the country in China understand that you have to do basic research. This is something that in Europe we don’t manage to justify to the taxpayer anymore. There could be an important role here for European science journalists to improve on this in the future.

NOTE TO EDITORS:
REsearch LAbs for TEaching journalists (RELATE) is a project funded by the European Commission under the Science in Society research area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

In 2009-10, 80 young journalists are visiting labs across Europe, interviewing researchers, then publishing their findings. These young journalists are ‘embedded’ on week-long study tours, giving them the inside track on all kinds of research.

This is not a PR exercise: participants are encouraged to explore all sides of the issue in question – whether healthcare, climate change or laser research – and to comment on both the benefits and impacts of the research.

Project partners include the European Journalism Centre (The Netherlands), Minerva Consulting and Communication (Belgium), and three European research bodies: ENEA (Italy), EPFL (Switzerland) and TÜBITAK (Turkey). In 2010, the project welcomed new labs, including ICFO (Barcelona), INRA (Paris) and LENS (Florence).

For more on RELATE, please see the participants’ blogs and interviews with Dr Markus Lehmkuhl of the Freie Universität Berlin, and Professor Mark Brake and Seema Jilani of the Science Communication Research Unit at Glamorgan University (UK).

 

Posted on April 6, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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Pitching for Publication: What Media Want

As part of its RELATE project, EJC presents the third in its series on pitching best practice.

In this interview with Dr Markus Lehmkuhl of the Freie Universität Berlin, we ask what different media want and how to build a network.

This follows interviews with Professor Mark Brake and Seema Jilani of the Science Communication Research Unit at Glamorgan University (UK).

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What are your three main tips for pitching science news?
ML: Well, it depends on where you want to publish. Is it a daily paper, a magazine, or radio? The rules—and chances—of getting published by a magazine are different compared to the chances of being published by a daily newspaper. It really depends on the medium, as each may have very different editorial styles or cultures. The main problem is when the editor doesn’t know who is proposing a topic.

So trust is important?
ML: Yes, trust, is a big issue. It is not very usual to propose a full script or a story already written. The editor, so far as I know in Germany and the USA, will want short proposals. They will ask: What is the message? And what is the issue?

So it is about developing a relationship and then constructing the idea together?
ML: In general, yes. There is only one area where this is different: regional or local papers. They prefer ready texts, at least in Germany. They do not want to work together with freelancers on the angle or even the main message of the article. They want to have a text that is ready to publish.

Is that unique to Germany or is it the same in other countries with federal systems, like Spain or the United States?
ML: I really don’t know. Here it has to do with the difference in the budgets or of the papers. The bigger the budget, the more likely editors will want to work out the main message together whoever proposes the topic. People in the big papers, they usually don’t want ready texts, but rather to influence the story. Editors want to shape things from the very beginning

How different are things in radio and TV?
ML: Radio stations are similar to the big papers. They do not want ready texts, they want proposals or short abstracts. When it comes to TV, well, this is not a sector where you can author something without knowing the editorial team.

So TV is a more closed system?
ML: It is generally impossible to propose an issue to a science programme on TV in Europe. First of all, we have few specialised programmes that broadcast scientific news. If you want to realise your proposal then you need the help of all the technical staff behind TV programmes. This makes it very difficult to act as a single freelancer on this market. Very difficult.

Networking at festivals and conferences must be a key way in? For example journalism or EU events. Is that what you’ve found?
ML: Yes, of course, these are good opportunities for freelancers to get in touch with the staff of news organisations of any kind. This is a crucial aspect because it gives the chance to get in touch personally with people who are decisive in this respect.

Does membership of the university or a journalism union help your credibility in that sense? Or is it not that simple?
ML: I think it is not that simple. TV programmes get many, many proposals every day from different people. And it is quite hard to assess how good somebody is, even when he claims to have a degree from a university or whatever. It is very difficult because every media outlet has their own - let’s say – language, their own things they want to have, their own style of writing and things like that. And when they don’t know who is proposing the topic then it is difficult for them. So you have a degree and you may be able to write an article. Fine, but this is not enough. They need people who write in the way they want to.

How did you get your ‘big break’ as a younger journalist?
ML: I sold my stuff to radio because I did a one year internship; it is called “Voluntariat” here in Germany. It is an internship, a trainee programme or whatever. This is just a year where the news institution, in this case the broadcaster, educates you to become an editor. And after that, I started my freelance career and sold the stuff to the editorials where I was working for in my internship. This was quite easy. They knew me and I knew them. I knew what they wanted to cover in their sections and so on. This is vital, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible in this respect. So when you are active, and successful in publishing science stuff in the media, then your credibility grows in a way. Other journalists recognise what you did in section a, b or c, and that in turn enables you to work for them too without doing an internship.

So it snowballs?
ML: This is one of the strategies we recommend to younger people: that they should start with an internship and after that pursue their freelance career. Starting from this point, they become known by other editors. After that, you can work on more advanced strategies, like getting published in national newspapers (although they don’t pay very well). But you publish your stuff there to become better known by other editorials; they read the national newspapers, and special sections, which are always searching for new authors, new talents.

What was your toughest pitch to the biggest publication?
ML: The most challenging for me was to get published in the biggest national newspaper in Germany, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, located in Munich. It was a section for which I hadn’t worked before. It was quite hard to get published here and it took quite a lot of effort. It was a matter of credibility. They didn’t know me and this was challenging for me. But this is 15 years ago at the very beginning of my career. The start is always quite hard.

So you convinced them through sheer persistence?
ML: Well, it was the topic that was decisive, because it was relevant and interesting, but specialised to an extent that no other reporters wanted to cover exactly this story. It sounded interesting, but nobody else in the paper wanted to cover this topic. And that was decisive.

The unique angle was the key?
ML: Yes, well, it was also the topic. They did not have this topic on their screen. But it was relevant and so they decided to publish it. But, once again, it was not a full text. I made my proposal based on an abstract. That was it.

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Note to editors:
RELATE is a project funded by the European Commission under the Science in Society research area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Up to 80 young journalists will visit labs across Europe, interview researchers, then publish their findings. Their articles should ‘make sense of science’ for a non-specialist audience. Project partners include Minerva Consulting and Communication (Belgium), the European Journalism Centre (The Netherlands), and three European research bodies: ENEA (Italy), EPFL (Switzerland) and TÜBITAK (Turkey). Dr Markus Lehmkul sits on the Advisory Board for the RELATE project.

Photo credit: ObLiterated on Flickr (Creative Commons)

Posted on November 20, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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Science Journalism: Selling Without Sensationalism

As part of its RELATE project, EJC presents the second in its series on pitching best practice.

In this short interview with Professor Mark Brake of the University of Glamorgan (UK), we look into the pitfalls of science writing, including dealing with editors and publishers.

How do you prevent dumbing down? Who is to blame for sensationalism? These and other questions add more pieces to the puzzle of selling your story. The idea is simple: to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Please see related interviews with Dr Markus Lehmkuhl and Seema Jilani, a RELATE participant and fellow of Glamorgan University.

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Can you give any special tips for pitching a science story?

MB: I always try to link any story I write with something topical or contemporary. That holds for whatever I publish: either on my own account or for the University of Glamorgan. But it’s important to remember: if you make it too topical, the story may have a rather short shelf-life.

By focusing on the topical, do you also run the risk of ‘dumbing down’?

MB: I think if you do it skilfully then it won’t be dumbed down too much. The important thing to be aware of is the difference in attitudes. Journalists’ news values aren’t necessarily the same as those of scientists. So there is always that discrepancy.

The title of one of your articles is ‘Taking the fiction out of science’s portrayal’? What exactly is the problem?

MB: The article that I wrote for The Times, Taking the fiction out of science’s portrayal was specifically about a science fiction course that I used to run at Glamorgan. The course was flagged up during the ‘dumbing down’ debate, which I found a misrepresentation by some elements of the media (though not by science journalists). The more narrow-minded elements of the media had the habit of claiming that such courses were ‘dumbed down’ without actually speaking with me or anyone on the course and without knowing anything at all about the content. That is a very shallow kind of journalism.

So is just the media to blame for this simplification and sensationalism? Can you give any examples?

MB: Well, I think it’s the publishing industry in general. My first of six books – all communicating science to different publics at different levels – was about the relationship between science fiction and science. I remember my editor telling me to make my hypothesis extreme for the purposes of the book. 

For instance, during the scientific revolution, some of the first science fiction stories were written during the 1600s. One of them was written by the German mathematician Johannes Kepler: a story called Somnium. In that story Kepler imagines alien life on the moon. So, rather than putting it in a more academic way, a slow-burn argument as to Kepler’s place, position and contribution, my editor favoured the idea that Kepler invented the alien – which is a popularised shorthand. It struck me that that had a lot in common with the way one might report it in a journalistic way.

Also, when my editor sent me her instructions on how best to write popular science, it was a sheet for how to write better journalism. So the rules for popular science writing adopted by this publisher were the same as the rules that one would adopt to write popular journalism in science. So yes, there was the same tendency towards those kinds of values – i.e. simplification.

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Note to editors
RELATE is a project funded by the European Commission under the Science in Society research area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Up to 80 young journalists will visit labs across Europe, interview researchers, then publish their findings. Their articles should ‘make sense of science’ for a non-specialist audience. Project partners include Minerva Consulting and Communication (Belgium), the European Journalism Centre (The Netherlands), and three European research bodies: ENEA (Italy), EPFL (Switzerland) and TÜBITAK (Turkey).

Flickr photo credit: Mtsofan

Posted on November 17, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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Bloggers’ credibility: A challenge for SYNC3

The mission of SYNC3, an EU-funded project, is to map the blogosphere.

In June and July 2009, SYNC3 held focus groups to clarify exactly what users will need. These groups were held in Maastricht, London, and Moscow respectively hosted by EJC, Google and RIA Novosti, three of the project partners.

One crucial point came up time and again: “How to check the credibility of unknown bloggers?” 

Credibility check
The broad mix of journalists, bloggers and communicators agreed that SYNC3 will be a useful tool for making sense of the blogosphere. But there were different views on how to judge the influence and credibility of bloggers.
Today’s bloggers do much more than share opinions on hobbies and political interests. Many are paid by groups worldwide to promote and build a positive image. So in some cases, their “opinions” are little more than public relations.
Participants agreed that SYNC3 should identify bloggers and rate their credibility; and this could be achieved via a rating system based on readers’ feedback.

Testing the water
Another focus group said that SYNC3 will be a great tool for testing the “social temperature” on a range of news items. Journalists can use SYNC3 to predict what will be “hot topics” and concentrate their efforts accordingly.
Meanwhile, communication professionals, including members of the ‘International Association of Business Communicators’, said this would help their work and planning for how to share stories with bloggers.

The next focus groups will be held in Brussels and Prague in late August.
Note to editors: SYNC3 was launched in March 2009. Co-funded by the European Union, it aims to track the posts and views of bloggers and citizen journalists in the context of traditional media news.
The SYNC3 consortium includes EJC, RIA Novosti, Google, Xerox, Athens Technology Centre and other partners, and is seeking feedback from as many potential users as possible. A questionnaire has been prepared on how SYNC3 can help people who follow blogs in their everyday work. The questionnaire and example scenario are on the project website http://www.sync3.eu. Latest news is available also through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates.

Posted on July 30, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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MediaNext: Transforming Ukrainian media

Ukrainian students are getting to grips with the latest web tools, including Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, thanks to a new project run by EJC and Internews Ukraine, and funded by MATRA.

The project, named MediaNext, has now reached all parts of the country. It kicked off in April 2009, when the MediaNext team launched its blog in LiveJournal, the most popular blogging service in Ukraine, to continually report on project development and build a network of supporters. Currently 155 journalists are following this blog which is in Ukrainian language. The “Blog as Web 2.0” platform proved itself to be an effective communication tool.  It received 1738 visits in one day, which is impressive for a newly-established blog. 
As a result of the first call for applications, the MediaNext team received 201 applications in May followed by106 more in June.
Preparation for the sessions were conducted by the MediaNext team—two new media experts from Ukraine and one from Columbia University, Ben Colmery. While the curriculum was being developed, new media itself became a vital tool in team communication and coordination. Google Documents allowed them to prepare these sessions as they worked on separate continents.
Communication was possible through five Skype conferences conducted May-June. When the MediaNext team was visiting MediaBarCamp-2009 in Lithuania, the conference calls united a US expert in New Jersey, Ukrainian trainers in Kiev, and the MediaNext team in Vilnius. As a result 60 pages of materials were developed that were very helpful for participants during the training sessions.
The uniqueness of the MediaNext programme is that each participant of the June-July regional training sessions used a PC or laptop with high speed internet during the two days of training. Participants could immediately practise their acquired skills.

“Social media like Twitter are quickly becoming some of the most important tools for journalists and NGOs to broadcast information,” said Ben Colmery. “Learning how to use these tools will make it much easier for them easily reach new audiences in a media industry that is rapidly shifting away from traditional media. I think this training really helped them to catch up with what is happening in the rest of the world.”
The first sessions showed that Ukrainian journalists were not skilled enough in new media to work with it effectively. In many cases, new media tools were used as a communication platform privately. Journalists had rarely used Twitter, blogs or Facebook to find information or share results from their own reporting.

“One thing I think they all needed, and all benefited from,” said Colmery, “was not just how to log in and perform basic functions of the sites. We helped them learn how to use these sites in conjunction with one another to form a new media strategy. They gained important skills for marketing their content, measuring and understanding their audiences, and expanding their online networks for communications and organizing. In my estimation, these are skills that are vital to the future viability of news media and civic action in Ukraine.”
Olena Goraguts, editor-in-chief of Litsa newspaper (Dnipropetrovsk) describes in her blog a dialogue with her 14 year-old son as motivation to apply for MediaNext. “Son, I wonder what is Web 2.0?” “Mom, you will hardly ever need it”: “Son how does RSS work? “Mom, don’t bother me, I don’t know!”
Igor Zapadenko, editor of Khmelnytskyi portal got into the practice of online Twitter reports from sessions of the city council to share information immediately. He also said he plans to conduct follow up events for local journalists in his native Khmelnytsky.
Andriy Voinytskyi from Kharkiv-based Status-Quo news agency updates Twitter with the most important news. During the training session he sent urgent news on corruption in court and his post was retweeted by a couple of Twitter users with 200+ followers. Now Andriy is thinking of creating a Facebook group for his news agency.
Oleksiy Shestakovskyi from Kyiv updated Twitter with a report from a roundtable on forthcoming elections. His followers were the first ones receiving reports on this issue.
MediaNext and EJC plan to conduct three further advanced sessions for journalists in “Module 2: A Course on Communication Utilizing New Media”. The course will be implemented in Kiev, Odesa, and Kharkiv in late August and early September. MediaNext (formerly New Media Initiative for Ukraine) is a Ukrainian-Dutch new media project conducted through cooperation between the European Journalism Centre and Internews Ukraine and funded by MATRA.
 

Posted on July 29, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under projects.