the-BA : Helen Margerison's Diary

Monday 5th September

Hi I’m Helen Margerison the BA Media Fellow talking over from Ainsley during the festival. I am a Geoscientist at Edinburgh University, having just finished a PhD studying climate change in Antarctica. My 7 week placement at the BBC has just come to an end and I think we are all just about set for the busy week ahead. So after a good nights sleep in the Halls of residence at Trinity College, I began the day with an early breakfast and made the short trip across the campus to the press centre to attend the 10am press conference.

After working at BBC Countryfile this was my first experience of being involved in a press conference and so armed with a stack of press releases I decided my first job would just to be to sit and watch what goes on. The subject of the conference was genetics and the horse which seemed a good one to start with being in a country famous for champion race horses. With little knowledge of either horses or genes I learnt a lot and discovered that if you are in the market for buying race horses it might be worthwhile demanding a DNA profile of your new horse in the future. This seemed like a newsworthy story but for my first story I was set to cover the discovery of a new source of water on Mars later on in the day. The Mars press conference was organised differently with only one scientist present which I felt was advantageous for starting out as we had more time and lots more information. I spent the next few hours writing up 500 words for the BA website which I really enjoyed. In the past I have written longer, more feature style articles and had to stop myself searching the internet for more information as time was short and I realised this type of searching would just confuse the article and waste my time!

It is becoming very apparent very quickly that as a scientist it is essential that you communicate your science effectively. You have to give the journalists exactly what they want otherwise it definitely won’t make the news! After having a stash of press releases myself and not working under the same pressures as the professional journalists, I still sifted through the pile ignoring many and ending up with only a few that were well written and which clearly explained the new science.

My afternoon was spent attending a number of talks including the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) seminar where journalists spoke about their experiences in the media and how they started out. After meeting an Irish TV crew who might want some help researching stories I set off to the X-change, a relaxed place to have a beer and discuss the best of the fest from that day. The show was hosted by Quentin Cooper and was really interesting, a good chance to catch up on things that were interesting that I hadn’t had chance to see. The evening ended with an ABSW party with free beer and food and I’m pleased to report that Media Fellows were the last ones standing!

Tuesday 6th September

Day two started a little earlier than yesterday as even more press conferences needed to be crammed into the busy schedule. Starting at 8.30 there was between six and seven conferences throughout the morning until around 1.30, leaving the afternoon for writing and submitting articles. The press conferences began with a psychological theme, looking at current brain research and psychological conditions. Problems of prejudice and the legacy of Einstein were some of the topics covered later on in the day.

It was exciting to see my first article on the BA website and inspired me to get writing! I spent my morning in most of the press conferences as I discovered there is a great deal to be learnt from just sitting and watching how the scientists pitch their work, the types of questions posed and the interactions amongst the journalists themselves. After deciding that forensic maths was the most interesting story to pursue I set about writing 500 words in two hours with only the press release and my scrawled notes from the press conference for background, see article. Hopefully I will be able to keep up this new found writing speed after this week!

I spent my afternoon at an event organised by Edinburgh University as part of the Science in the City programme. This formed one of a series of interactive workshops and discussions for the general public. The events were spread over the week and aimed to encourage discussion of scientific issues in an informal learning environment. The title of the workshop was “Risky Business” and we spent the afternoon, betting on horses, looking at factors involved in risk taking and weighing up the risks involved in specific medical treatments (read my piece). With a total winnings of 24 chocolate coins I felt my risk taking had gone well for that afternoon!

I headed over to the X-change to listen to some of the things I had missed throughout the day and caught up on myself a bit before the evening events began. Tonight we were torn between two drinks receptions, one at the Guinness factory with much free Guinness and an explanation of the science behind putting the bubbles in the black stuff, or reception in the Old Library where the Book of Kells is kept. As I was running late I plumed for the closest destination and wandered over to where the Book of Kells was located in Trinity College. The Old Library provided a spectacular location for the drinks reception sponsored by AstraZeneca and started the evening off well. After missing out on the Guinness tasting we decided to head into town to sample a few of our own.

Wednesday 7th September

We are already half the way through the week and it has so far been a whirl wind of working hard and playing hard. I am learning to write more concisely and to get to the point more directly. Most importantly it seems essential to get your main point across in the first sentence you write. Once you have caught the reader’s attention it seems you can work back from there.

The press conferences got underway and the favourite stories began to emerge fairly early on in the day. Those that looked like they would make the news tomorrow included the science of staying young, research to explain why your grumpy teenager behaves like Harry Enfield’s character “Kevin” and the implications of nanotechnology for the future.

As I finished my review of yesterday’s Risky Business workshop, I began to think of ways in which it would be possible to get things published this week. As the science festival was not covered by BBC Countryfile, I was not specifically attached to any particular journalist. Although I was initially a little bit concerned that I was not working directly with anyone, it in fact turned out to be an advantage, since I had a greater freedom to pursue articles I was interested in and introduce myself to journalists who didn’t have Media Fellows attached to them. As most of the papers had at least one and often two journalists covering the days stories they pretty much had most stories covered. While having a coffee with another Media Fellow, Mark, we began to think about what we could write that the journalists did not have time to cover. We decided to come at things from a different angle. Everything that was newsworthy was being reported so we started to look at the process of science reporting itself, initially posing the question “was the media failing science?” We planned to interview the main science correspondents from a mixture of print, TV and new media in an effort to understand and report on what factors influences science writers when choosing stories and whether the media is in part responsible for the direction that new scientific research takes.
The evening brought another drinks reception this time at Dublin Castle! The Minister for Education and Science gave an entertaining talk and the castle surroundings were lovely.

Thursday 8th September

I spent the morning running about between various press conferences. I concentrated on the press conference relating to the development of science in Africa. The scientists pointed to developing sustainable ways to manage the agriculture sector and tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic as the two most important challenges that need to be addressed in order for Africa to improve its economy (see article).

I sat in on a couple of other press conferences relating to brain function, in order to report back to the Irish TV company but unfortunately none of the stories fitted into their news reports for that day. A fascinating press conference announcing new insights into the Pterosaurs, the largest flying reptiles ever to have lived on the planet, sparked a lot of interest and I set about writing up the news for The Geological Society website and magazine.

With three articles on the go I found today the most stressful, particularly as we had a number of interviews to carry out in between the writing. The interviews which provided some of the background to our story about science reporting took up the rest of the afternoon, after which we rushed over to the formal festival dinner. The food was lovely and we ate in another great hall on Trinity Campus. The evening ended with a number of speeches, including the presentation of awards for the Daily Telegraph Young Science Writers Competition and a retirement presentation to Tim Radford, the science correspondent at the Guardian. Unfortunately I was running behind on my writing so had to retire after to the meal to finish off before the last day got under way!

Friday 9th September

After a few hours sleep, I checked out and headed over to the press centre to finish my articles by one o’clock, before heading over to the airport. There were some exciting press conferences to go to today, in particular one lead by Dr. Tim Reynolds from the University of Cambridge who revealed the details of a soundless aeroplane that will hopefully be in our skies in the next 15 to 20 years.

We completed our article about science reporting, concluding that the media is not failing science. After speaking with press officers, scientists and journalists we established that science reporting is a particularly tricky business which can be hindered by a general lack of understanding of the process of science. Scientific developments mostly occur on time-scales which are generally incompatible with news stories. The finished article will be published in Research Fortnightly in the next few weeks. Having just finished in time, I fled for my plane and collapsed on a seat and slept as soon as I reached the airport.

Although it was hectic and at times quite stressful, I had an incredible week and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I learnt more than I could have imagined possible in one week and had fun with some great people at the same time.

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