the-BA : Festival Day 3

Day Three

Well unfortunately, I didn’t win the ride in the Lotus Elise, but we did have a very enjoyable evening at a nice restaurant and came up with a new definition of a Media Fellow………………. The new definition of a Media Fellow; extremely intelligent and gifted human being, scientifically classified as Pseudojournalisticus scientificus.

The morning was spent searching for a public event to attend for the day as my allocated session didn’t begin until the afternoon. Within minutes of walking out of the residence, I had found the gold in the form of a bird of prey display. Two very witty and passionate men from a Bird of Prey sanctuary in Kent deserved my undivided attention. It was so interesting listening to these men and watching the bird behaviour and we had some insights into the rampant sexual behaviour of ducks and bizarre sexual practices of the Great Bustard. (Read my piece). Apparently, a lot of male Bustards pretend to be gay and hang around with the females, so when other males are interested, these pseudo-females offer their services. Then, when it is time for breeding, these pseudo-females revert to male status and have first choice in the array of females. Bizarre bird behaviour!

I had now two stories under my belt and it has been a learning experience having such short deadlines, moving from one story to the next in this fast paced world of scientific journalism. I had to put myself in the reader’s position and ask myself questions such as what would I want to read on the BA website? What would grab my attention and lead me to read a story? The answer was getting a ‘catchy’ title, something to get the readers juices flowing and then hitting the reader with an introduction that clearly and directly explains the research or findings. I was learning fast and was always on the constant lookout for tomorrow’s story while listening intently to the other journalists around, because any advice and input they could give was always a bonus.

So after submitting my bird of prey article, I steamed ahead to the press centre to take part in a great fishy debate. I got quite involved in this session and right from the beginning I was searching for a certain story angle, and I felt the nature of my questions were different, more journalistic than scientific. Metamorphosis was happening. Great! This session looked at how we should tackle the issue of over-fishing, how healthy and safe eating fish actually is, the trade of fish between poorly developed countries and the richer nations and how maybe fish may hold clues to help in the fight against cancer. (Read my article)

Next on the evenings agenda was the x-change again, this actually was my favourite part of the day. As a press person here, you can’t attend everything, there’s just too much exciting science out there for me to handle. After the lively debate, the Fellows were on their way to another reception hosted by AstraZeneca, one of the sponsors of the event.

Read day four

	Home

	Science in Society

	Media Fellowships

	Fellows' work

	Hosts

	Schedule

	Eligibility

	Reports

	Quotes

	Diaries

	FAQ

	Supporters

	Similar schemes