Questions to Ask When Interviewing a Scientist

Approximately one gazillion years ago, I wrote a piece including tips from reporters about how to prepare for interviews with scientists. While that post is useful, several people have recently asked me for more specific guidance on how to interview researchers. Specifically, they wanted to know not only how to prepare, but what sorts of questions to ask.

Why Reporters Don’t Let Scientists Review Their Stories

Many scientists don’t understand why reporters won’t let scientists review draft versions of news stories before the stories are published. Some scientists think this is unfair and leads to inaccuracies in news stories about scientific research – but there are reasons that news outlets discourage this sort of pre-publication review. Let’s dig in to that a little bit.

Communicating Science in the Clickbait Era: Tips and Lessons From EurekAlert’s 2016 PIO Seminar

Photo credit: Hash Milhan. Shared under a Creative Commons license. Click for more information.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Chanapa Tantibanchachai, a public information officer (PIO) at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Keep reading to learn what tips Tantibanchachai picked up at EurekAlert’s 2016 seminar for PIOs.

EurekAlert! Security Breach (with Updates)

I thought many in the science communication community would want to know about a security breach at EurekAlert!, and what that means for the service. I’m running the update from AAAS in its entirety below (retrieved from this page), and will run any updates as I receive them. [Multiple updates added. See below.]

Some Questions and Thoughts on the NASW Officer Debate

Hey there, folks. This is some inside-baseball ruminating about the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), so feel free to skip this one if that’s not up your alley.

Why a TV Producer Created a Database for Finding Subject-Matter Experts

Editor’s Note: This is guest post by Stavros Rougas, a co-founder of Expertise Finder and a former producer at the Toronto-based current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin. I recently heard of Expertise Finder and wanted to learn more about it. I figured that the fastest way to learn about it was to get the founder to explain it to me. To be clear, I’m not endorsing Expertise Finder, and have not been compensated in any way for running this guest post. I just thought it was interesting, and thought some of you might find it interesting as well.

How U.S. Reporters Are Using Facebook, Twitter

Image credit: Sean MacEntee. Retrieved via Flickr and shared under a Creative Commons license. Click for more information.

Social media are used to connect with people and share information, so it is not surprising that reporters are using social media platforms in their work – connecting with sources and collecting information are fundamental aspects of journalism. A recent paper offers insights into how, and to what extent, newspaper journalists are using Facebook and Twitter in their reporting.

A (Podcast) Conversation About Science Communication and Outreach

Photo credit: Chris Heidenreich. Retrieved via Flickr, shared under a Creative Commons license. Click for more information.

Want to hear me talk about some of the nuts and bolts of science communication? Now’s your chance.

What Reporters Can Do to Work More Effectively With PIOs

Photo credit: Charles Dyer. Retrieved via Flickr and shared under a Creative Commons license. Click for more information.

Note: This post first appeared on the Association of Health Care Journalist’s Covering Health blog.

There are a lot of posts and stories out there focused on how public information officers (PIOs) can work more effectively with journalists, or that highlight extremely bad pitches aimed at reporters. I’ve written a few of them myself. But there are also things that reporters can do to work more effectively with PIOs. You don’t see many posts about that.