Media Opportunities

At our "Science in the Media" event on August 25, 2009 we brought in a couple of media experts to give a talk and lead a discussion on how scientists can become more involved in the media. Speaking that day were Nancy Palumbo and Rob Tedesco. Nancy served as the Senior Vice President for Strategic Marketing and Corporate Communications for the New York Daily News. Rob worked as a copy editor for The Connecticut Post. Both of them brought a wealth of knowledge about how the media process works, and stimulated a spirited discussion ranging from what types of scientific mistakes are the most common to ways in which scientists can participate more in the process. Below are notes from the talk along with ongoing research, thoughts, and links from Science House as we continue to learn more in this area. Do you have any thoughts? Write to us and we will include them in this document.

Rob began the discussion with a set of Powerpoint slides that gave some background about how newspapers produce their content every day. Some of his thoughts:

• Each newspaper has a "budget" that represents how much text each story can contain. This is largely determined by the number of available pages and the amount of advertising that has been sold for that day. The remaining space is the available room for articles. A journalist is "over budget" when the article is too long. The most common solution to an over budget article is to chop all of the content from the end. Because of this, some of the richest content ends up hitting the cutting room floor.


• Fact checking at most small to mid-sized newspapers is done by the journalist and the editor. Only the largest of newspapers have the resources to have a dedicated fact checker.


• When the focus of an article is primarily science, there are generally very few factual scientific errors. Trouble most often occurs when science is only tangential to the article. This is where errors are more likely to occur, at least in part because the journalist is less likely to have the time to ensure that the science is solid when most of his time goes into verifying and checking the rest of the article.


• Journalists and editors often turn to a small set of key resources when checking the accuracy of an article. Examples include: Google, AP wire, and Wikipedia.

Journalists will also call experts, although they are often on very tight deadlines and require a response in less than an hour. It was suggested that Science House might be able to act as a clearinghouse for scientific resources. A journalist would call Science House with a particular request and we would search through our database for experts in that field, providing email addresses or phone numbers of those scientists who opted into this program. The journalist would then have a selection of experts to choose from so that her chances of reaching an expert within the deadline were increased. Does acting as a resource to journalists sound appealing to you? Join our network of scientists today!

Another way in which scientists might be able to help journalists is through the writing of modular paragraphs about scientific issues that journalists could drop into articles. These paragraphs would be trusted materials vetted by scientists, explaining scientific concepts in clear and simple terms. These paragraphs would then be indexed and made available via this website for journalists all over the world to use. Would you like to contribute to such a database? Write to us with your ideas.

One attendee suggested that influencing the accuracy of journalism might best be done by focusing on the writer of AP/Reuters since these feeds are picked up and used in almost all newspapers. By ensuring that the source material is accurate you make it much more likely that the thousands of articles using those feeds are accurate.

There was also much discussion about what scientific accuracy really means in the context of journalism. Is it getting the facts correct? Or avoiding pseudo science? Or is it about having a scientific perspective on issues that often do not include a science perspective at all? To that end, Science House will be conducting a media science survey in which we select a number of publications and review each article for scientific accuracy. We hope to find out more about how often errors occur, and how often science makes an appearance at all. Interested in helping with the survey? Contact us!

Nancy had many thoughts as well, based on her years of experience with the New York Daily News. Some of her observations:

• One way in which scientists may be able to contribute more to science journalism is to contact freelance writers who specialize in science articles, reaching out to them and offering help and guidance when needed. Science House will be assembling a list of such freelancers and will be hosting events in which scientists will get the chance to introduce themselves.


• Washington DC is always looking for scientific resources. There are bills requiring scientific input, and legislators sometimes do not know where to turn for help. Science House might again be able to act as a clearinghouse for such requests.


• Turnover at newspapers is very high, making it even more difficult to establish relationships that deepen over time.


• Reporters really appreciate help. They are often working on a number of articles at the same time with deadlines always looming over them. If we can reach out and offer help that makes their job easier we will get their thanks.


• Radio stations are always looking for people to talk about interesting topics. Science House will be gathering a list of such programs that would welcome scientists as speakers.

Interested in contributing to this topic? Contact us!