the-BA : Web diary 4

Monday 29 August

I spent today’s bank holiday (and the fantastic but surely fleeting great weather that came with it) filing a story from the conference I attended last week.

Attending an academic conference in the middle of my Media Fellowship was a risk, and soon after arriving I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get back into the academic groove. But thankfully I settled back in and really enjoyed the meeting.

One of the presentations was about the emerging technology of ectogenesis – or “artificial wombs”. A researcher was arguing that they will be a reality sooner than we think and that it’s time to debate the issues now. I got a quote from the researcher whilst at the conference, and a copy of her presentation.

Writing the article was a bit more challenging than others I have done, as I had no press release to guide me. So I spent some time on the web checking facts and claims and seeing what else had been written.

The article came together well. It was accompanied in the physical paper by a graphic of a baby being incubated in a tank, which I worked with the graphics team to create. The piece appeared as a ‘page lead’ on Tuesday (the top story on that page).

Tuesday 30 August

Mark had conflicting commitments this morning so I volunteered to attend a press conference on his behalf. Somewhat surreally, it was held at Imperial College, where I normally work.

The conference was dedicated to the Cassani space mission to Saturn. They had some interesting new data about one of its moons – Enceladus.

Space is not really my strong point; I had wanted to be an astronomer for a few years when I was little but then realised that physics was a necessity. I cannot, never have and never will be able to cope with vector problems so this pretty much ruled it out!

The conference featured around 10 speakers so we received a lot of information. There were also around three separate but interesting facts that would make a story, plus some lovely pictures. So with Mark’s guidance on structure, I wrote and filed the story.

Another highlight of the conference was meeting Robin Williams – not the Hollywood actor but the very well-respected Australian science journalist, whom I had grown up listening to. He was very nice and was interested to hear about the BA scheme.

This was a very interesting story to write, as I had a very tight deadline and lots of facts to digest and re-iterate (and come to terms with myself!).

Wednesday 31 August

Who would have thought what knowledge my Media Fellowship would bring? I now know all about… third nipples!

A team of scientists at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Centre have identified a gene thought to trigger breast development. They have comically named it after Scaramanga, the three-nippled villain in the James Bond film The Man With the Golden Gun.

On the serious side, the gene is implicated in pathways to breast cancer, but the lighter side of the finding was very newsworthy.

This morning I was able to speak to the scientist directly before writing my article, in which I was able to have some fun discussing things such as celebrity third nipples and third nipples throughout history, as well as serious science. The scientist was very clear and gave some good sound-bites, which was a help. Half-way through the interview he asked me about my background, so I had to confess to having a genetics degree, but I asked him to pretend that I didn’t so what I wrote would be decipherable. Read the article online.

Mark was working on a story about the chimp genome this afternoon, so I helped him by generating a fact box of genome comparison figures. Considering how many genome projects there are, finding explicit statements about similarity was surprisingly difficult.

Thursday 1 September

Today we began to turn our attention to the BA Festival of Science, which starts next week in Dublin.

The BA held a press briefing at the Dana Centre, in which we were treated to a sneak preview of some of the Festival talks. Among the speakers was Professor Robert Winston, current president of the BA.

We also heard from four other speakers, on a range of interesting medical and social topics. But nothing can be said at this stage, as they are all still under strict embargo!

The BA gave out mountains of Festival press papers covering over 150 talks, which are colour-coded according to day. I have no idea of where to start deciphering and interpreting all of these, or how I will haul them to Dublin on Sunday.

I spent the afternoon following up one of the morning’s talks, which will be published on Monday. This involved looking at the ‘cuts’ to see what had been written before and surfing for further background information online.

It’s interesting to note that often, media reports state that a law or policy ‘will be’ enacted, and then don’t follow-up to say that something has happened. Often this is because nothing happened.

Friday 2 September

This morning I attended another very interesting media conference at the SMC, this time about psychiatric phenomenology; which relates subjective experiences to mental illness. I then spent the afternoon tidying up my piece about the destruction of cold-water coral reefs.

It’s difficult to believe that today is my last day in the newsroom. Four weeks has passed incredibly fast and I’ve learned a huge amount.

To continue this reflective vein, I’ve really enjoyed my Fellowship. Three “take home messages” come to mind. First, I’ve realised media-types are just people like everyone else, and are not to be feared. Second, news is a big juggling act, in which compromises have to be made and sometimes (unfortunately, in an environment of limited space such as a newspaper) the worthy hard-toiled science gives way to the “sexy story”. Third, the people who come up with headlines are among the most witty on earth.

Overall, the Fellowship has “de-mystified” the media for me and allowed me to see what journalists need from us to do their job properly. Namely the art of the crisp sound-bite should not be under-estimated!

All I’m hoping now is that this environment of anti-procrastination, in which I have comfortably written around 1,000 words a day, will follow me back to academia!

Things are likely to shift up a gear next week in Dublin, where I will be working in the press room with all the other Media Fellows. Another Media Fellow, Helen Margerison, will be writing a diary during the BA Festival of Science next week.

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