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11.09

My AAAS Mass Media fellowship at the Los Angeles Times got off to a quick start. On my first day, my editor, Ashley Dunn, assigned me a story about a 2,000-year-old date palm seed that germinated. By the end of my first week, I had two articles in print—one was even picked up by my hometown newspaper, the Idaho Statesman.

Just a few weeks before, I had turned in my biophysics Ph.D. thesis at UC Berkeley, packed up my belongings, and moved into a sublet in L.A. with poor air conditioning and a Pepto-Bismol-pink kitchen. I wondered what I had gotten myself into, of course, but mostly I was excited to finally be pursuing science writing, which had only been a hobby in grad school.

The nuts and bolts

A typical workweek at the Los Angeles Times science desk went like this: On Mondays and Fridays we discussed the next week’s science stories. The writers pitched their ideas and the editor scheduled the selected ones for the coming week. Even as a fellow, I pitched stories during every meeting and my opinion of other stories was taken seriously despite my lack of newspaper experience. In a week, I usually ended up with two stories that ran and one or two ideas that were scrapped during initial research. Reporting was fast-paced, but my colleagues were laid-back, and nearly everyone was supportive — I had four other science writers to pester with questions about procedures, writing style, and where to go for lunch.

For a weekday story, which ran on the day the research paper was published, I spent about a day working on interviews, looking over past coverage, reading the original research paper, and talking with my editor or the other writers about its significance. It’s much easier to write about a topic if you’ve already had to explain it to others, particularly to editors who are skeptical of any given study’s larger significance. Then I spent one to two days writing and revising and finished the piece a day or two before it ran.

In addition to the daily news stories, I also wrote a Q&A piece and a short feature. These were difficult to write due to the limitations of newspaper format. Even when you get a “lot” of space, it’s still pretty restricted, and proportionally I had much more information to squeeze into that space than for a daily story. Painful decisions had to be made. For the Q&A with Cheryl Hayashi, who studies spider silk at UC Riverside, I had to cut 70 minutes of taped interview down to the equivalent of 5 minutes of conversation. I sacrificed dozens of fascinating spider biology tidbits in the process, like the one about male spiders using silk pads to transfer sperm. All that editing wasn’t easy, but it really forced me to think about what makes the strongest story and why I wanted to include all of the details that initially caught my eye. In this case I cut the spider trivia because the story was about Hayashi and her research, not the wacky weirdness of spider biology.

The best of everyone’s research

My impulse to include everything highlights what I liked most about the fellowship — hearing all the little details about science going on around the world. Even as a scientist, I never got this much of a peek into the work of other scientists, aside from those in my lab or immediate field. As a journalist, I called up astrophysicists, paleontologists, and sociologists, to name a few, and almost everyone granted me an interview. The phrase “I’m calling from the LA Times” opens a lot of doors.

For both the feature and the interview, I spent a day in the field, which I loved. The science came alive when Hayashi said casually, “Can you help me with this tarantula?” or when I noticed that resourceful scientists at the Mt. Wilson Observatory had installed shelves in the solar tower’s tiny bathroom for storing tapes of backed-up data.

Earthquakes, both real and figurative

Perhaps the most interesting place to be when a (mild) earthquake hits Los Angeles is in the LA Times building. I was not raised in earthquake country, and in the moment it took me to gather my wits during a 5.4 quake in July, photographers had grabbed their cameras and gone in search of damage and reporters were already researching the details of the quake.

The real shakeup of the summer, however, came in the form of layoffs. With nearly 150 newsroom (250 total) jobs cut, people were understandably tense. Almost every conversation that wasn’t about a specific story wandered back to the layoffs, the mismanagement of the paper, or the future of journalism in general.

Once the layoffs were actually announced, the newsroom was in mourning. Each Friday, a collection of farewell e-mails would show up in my inbox, saying things like “The past 27 years working here have flown by.” In the year since my fellowship, there have been more deep staff cuts and significant reorganizations at the LA Times; the science desk and the health desk have merged, and some of my former co-workers are gone. It’s an eye-opening time to be getting started in journalism. I won’t lie: the turmoil at the LA Times made me question whether journalism is a viable career, but I concluded that problem solvers like scientists will only help to shape science journalism into a more effective institution in the future.

A positive experience

During my fellowship, I learned that there is a lot of interesting science out there, scientists usually want to tell their stories, and the public genuinely wants to hear them. I already felt that communicating science to the public was important, and it was a simple but refreshing discovery to find that I didn’t have to force it down people’s throats. I got a lot of positive reader responses, and I kept every single one.

There is a lot that passes for science journalism out there that is not. Reprinted press releases, one-source stories, and pharma-funded reports abound. It’s difficult for the layperson to discriminate between them and solid science reporting. This just encourages me to do what I can by sticking with science writing.

In ten short weeks, I learned the basics of journalism, what constitutes science news, and the importance of considering one’s audience — none of which are as easy or as obvious as they sound. In the year since I began my fellowship, I’ve continued as a freelance science writer and editor, a career move that would have been much more difficult without the fellowship experience. However, scientists and engineers in many career paths, not just science writing, would benefit from spending a summer as a journalist. If you think writing may be in your future or if you just want to learn to communicate more effectively about your own science, then I suggest you give it a try.

Editor’s Note: For more information on the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship program and to apply for the 2010 program, go to www.ieeeusa.org/communications/massmedia.asp. The application deadline is 15 January 2010!

Wendy Hansen earned her Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of California - Berkeley in 2008. She is currently a freelance science writer and editor.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.