Secrets from the seasoned: making a medical conference work for you

Long time medical reporters shared savvy tips on how to make the most of a medical conference this afternoon at Science Writers 2010 in New Haven, CT, while a scientific press room manager revealed tips for public information officers on how to garner attention for their stories.

Seasoned medical journalist Bob Finn, the San Francisco Bureau chief of International Medical News Group discussed the ins and outs of a conference press room. He disclosed his list of essential must-have equipment for covering a conference: at the top of his list the Kodak ZI8, which records video and has an audio jack. He carries back-up recorders, batteries and a long extension cord, as you never find an outlet close to your seat. A quick snap of power point slides and posters captures all the data and figures he needs for his stories. A swift tip: shoot the conflict of interest slide, which the presenter only shows for a second right after the presentation title.

Peggy Peck, executive editor of MedPage Today, stressed the importance of “research, research, research.” Journalists should show up at the conference prepared, an easy task in the digital age. “Let your fingers do the walking,” she said. “Almost everything can be found online.” She stressed that you need to know what was written beforehand to give the story context. Without knowing the history, you can’t spot new findings from rehashed research. A key question to always keep in mind is who is funding the research. And keep your ears tuned for magic words like “coffee.” When MedPage ran a story on how coffee reduces circulating insulin, the surge of traffic crashed their site for two hours.

Eric Rosenthal, an independent medical journalist and special correspondent for Oncology Times, likes to trawl a meeting. You can be spoon fed by the press room or you can pay attention to what is happening at the meeting, he said. “I eavesdrop on the big names during the plenary sessions to see their reactions. Then I ask them afterward why they reacted that way.” He strongly feels that serendipity can be your best friend, but you also have to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves by learning the art of the ambush.

Jim Sliwa, media relations manager for the American Society for Microbiology and long time press room coordinator for two large scientific meetings provided ten clever tips to public information officers for promoting your research at a major medical meeting:

1) Do your homework before calling the meeting PIO: often they post tip sheets on their sites

2) Start early: the abstracts are submitted 6 months in advance and the scientists know they will be attending 2 ½ months before the meeting. The press rooms start putting together their packets the day after the scientists learn they are invited to present.

3) Have a story

4) Don’t piggyback irrelevant research

5) Connect: if you are putting out a press release, send a copy to the conference PIO.

6) Be transparent

7) Be helpful

8) Solicit advice and then take it to heart

9) Don’t play games: people remember when they have been burned

10) Remember: Bigger isn’t always better. If a conference PIO spreads your story by word of mouth, even if they don’t issue a press conference, many journalists will pick up the story.

A Living Elements of Style

Voice, story, character, structure, and authority. The elements of a great novel wouldn’t look much different (with the possible exception of authority). And the message of this afternoon's session "Great science writing part II: Building the big book" was clear: science writing, at its very best, is great literature. In science, we may find the comedies and tragedies, the romances and poetry, of our age.

Each of the panelists took on a different element, beginning with style -- as interpreted by author KC Cole. She described how she veered into science, from writing for magazines like People and Glamour, when she had grown tired of her own voice, a “chatty” style that had become overly familiar. As a stylist, she cautioned, you need to avoid becoming a caricature. Practice different ranges.

Next, author Jonathan Weiner talked about how scientists and science journalists often have different views of what makes a good story. Weiner cited French mathematician Blaise Pascal on the subject: “What’s a story? You want to be able to say, ‘It goes like this: ~~~~~.’” (Pascal drew a curvy, graph-like line in his journal.) And the novelist John le Carré: “The cat sat on the mat -- that’s not a story. The cat sat on the dog’s mat -- that’s a story.” Great science writing is a matter of seamlessly intertwining these two kinds of stories: scientific exposition and narrative tension.

To author Charles Seife, characters are like "lampposts that illuminate history.” And in his book Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea, finding a constant light source was a problem, given that the narrative covered two thousand years of history. The solution? Personifying the number, and casting Zero itself as the protagonist. In his book, Zero is born, grows, struggles, clashes, and even punches a hole in something.

Speaking about structure, author Jennifer Ouellette drew a metaphor between a book and a car. If story is the engine, character is the heart, and voice is the comfy interior, structure holds the whole thing together. Start with an outline, she says, but know it’s going to change.

And lastly, author Carl Zimmer (pictured above) took on the most idiosyncratic of the five elements: authority. “It’s problematic for people like myself -- that is, English majors,” he acknowledged. But building authority is ultimately a matter of becoming obsessed, finding an addiction, digging into history -- and not skimping on footnotes. Even an English major can get to know a subject better than all but a few people. “If you don’t believe me about that,” Zimmer said, “we can talk later about shark tapeworms.”

Last book standing

Near the end of "Great science writing II: Building the big book" session, Robert Lee Hotz presented the panelists with a thought experiment. It was an update / modern cousin of the classic scenario: If your house is burning and you can grab one book from your bookshelf, what would it be? (Though in Hotz's setup, all books had been digitized and physical books were all but nonexistent. Then one day, he says, the power went out and all those e-books were lost. Which single book do you still have? Hotz's setup adds another dimension--it's not just your house that was destroyed, but all books ever published in history.)

Carl Zimmer said On the Origin of Species. Jennifer Ouellette followed with Newton's Principia. Charles Seife thought for a moment and offered up the Bible. Jonathan Weiner saved The Way Things Are by Lucretius ("He's already survived at least one apocalypse," Weiner added) and K. C. Cole said she wouldn't let go of the Bose-Einstein Letters.

These answers followed a revealing session in which each author personified one particular aspect of writing a book about science. Hearing writers dig into their own methods and present their experiences in light of these aspects was a novel and useful way to hear about the process, not necessarily exclusive to books. Many of their comments, reflections and experiences speak to more universal themes. Figure out when you write, find the best voice for your piece, be deliberate about structure. Each writer has to figure out how to make it work.

This session was a nice follow-up to the one last night at the Beinecke Library, in which some of these writers read from their works.

How about the rest of us? What single book about science would you grab from your shelf? I'm still chewing on that question, but The Elements keeps popping into my mind.

Shooting 101: Video for Writers

In little over 60 minutes, Christie Nicholson and Eric Olson delivered a crash course on video reporting for beginners.

They passed around a sample starter kit (a $112 Kodak Zi6 pocket video camera, a tripod, and an ear mic) and got down to business by offering tips via video example. It’s the do’s and don’ts of news clips – here they are:

1. Keep it short. News videos should last about 2 minutes. And you’ve got about 20 seconds before your audience goes South, warned Nicholson, a freelance contributor to Scientific American.

2. Attract the viewer. Aim for visually pleasing scenes (i.e. not a researcher in his chair.) As for audio, don’t shy away from sounds and music. And regarding the script, remember humor. By example, Olson, an audio-video editor at Nature, showed us one of his videos, in which he begins a story by asking why anyone would smash rabbit bones.

3. Stop the tape. Don’t be afraid to turn off the camera to ask your source to repeat something that didn’t come out quite right. If an ambulance zooms by, stop and start again. If it’s windy, relocate.

4. Divide composition space into thirds. Nicholson and Olson illustrated this lesson by projecting live videos onto a screen with a 3-by-3 grid overlain. The subject does not sit front and center, but rather fills up two of the columns – eyes line up with the bottom of the top row. NASW attendees tried it out for themselves by composing mock interviews. In the video posted here, Nancy Huddleston of the National Academy of Sciences does a nice job of lining up her mock-interviewee, Mel Berkowitz of Interon Productions in Jamaica, New York.

5. Record footage beyond the interview. In the film world, that’s called B-roll. To demonstrate, Olson shot a mock-video of Nicholson counting money.

6. Use a tripod. And avoid moving the camera around, zooming in or panning out.

7. Interview tips: Ask three questions before your serious questions begin to warm-up the interviewee. And then for nice color, ask people to talk about themselves.

Taking Down Britney Spears: How Science Writers Can Fight for a Spot in the Media

The conflict between new media and old media or bloggers and journalists may seem like the hot topic these days, but at least one panelist this afternoon believes that such thinking is out of vogue. What is more important is talking about innovative ways to get science stories to people who don’t know it can be fun, even if that means mixing science in with news of Britney Spears, said panelist Bora Zivkovic at today’s session on “Rebooting science journalism: Adapting to the new media landscape.”

Bora, a newly minted blog editor at Scientific American, doesn’t see organizations such as his or Discover, Seed and Nature competing with each other in the new media landscape; rather he feels they are collaborators with a common mission. The real competitor, he says, is Britney Spears.

“We are all in this together now,” said Bora. “We are all in the same business of promoting science and pushing science literacy. I think if we figure out ways to collaborate, we can fight for our piece of the media pie and show people that science is fun, interesting and important.”

Fellow panelist Emily Bell left her post at The Guardian a few months ago to direct the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia School of Journalism. She said her new role as a “hackademic” is giving her the time to think about how to crack very hard problems in journalism today. She admitted that she didn’t have the answer on how to keep our jobs – and not surprisingly none of the panelists could impart such wisdom – but she did convey one key mantra: nothing is ever going to stay the same.

And she happily gave a number of tips on how we as journalists could evolve to survive in the current climes. (1) Adapt your mindset to the fact that journalism is always going to be changing. (2) Realize that the content and the platform go hand in hand, and that you have to innovate both at the same time. (3) Differentiate yourself as a writer and a brand, developing a deep expertise or niche. (4) Understand the process, recognizing all the elements that go into a great story, whether it is the BP oil spill or the midterm elections.

Emily, who is creating a new program that combines computer science and journalism, emphasized that science journalists of the future are going to need a different skill set and a different way of thinking. She doesn’t see blogging and journalism as all that different, quoting that 35 percent of bloggers were or are currently employed as journalists.

“There is this snarky debate that the web creates bad journalism, and I just don’t agree with that,” explained Emily. “There is no dead air time on the internet, absolutely none. There is no set inventory to fill like in other venues – the stories are never finished, and they can continually be commented on.”

Blogging became a popular topic in the session – how to tell blog from a news article, how to tell a good blog from a bad blog, how to use blogging to get into writing. Bora, who was the first NASW member to be accepted on the basis of blog posts alone, recognized that blogging may be a new and frightening thing for a number of veteran writers. But he explained that for those who want to explore blogs, there are a number of science blogging networks that provide a stamp of approval on their content that is unparalleled in other subject matter such as politics or knitting. The moderator warned Bora not to antagonize knitting bloggers.

Bora’s reply: “I wouldn’t do that, they are powerful and they have needles.”

Telling stories with video

Science writers aren’t just learning to write anymore; in these digital times they want to learn about Web video.

Confession: I stole that lead. It’s the opening narration for a short video produced and directed by volunteers who attended the NASW workshop “Producing video, on camera and off.” Instructors Christie Nicholson, freelancer and online contributor at Scientific American; and Eric R. Olson, audio-video editor at the Nature Publishing Group; walked us through the process of composing and shooting several quick interviews. Then they showed us how to organize the shots and add narration. “It’s not rocket science,” Nicholson reassured us.

Olson passed around a surprisingly small equipment kit, used for making Web videos at Scientific American, which contained a Kodak camera and microphone. (A Flip camera is an alternative to the Kodak model.) The other two essentials: a tripod and editing software such as Final Cut Pro or iMovie. Price for everything: only about $200.

We looked at some examples of videos that worked well, such as Carl Zimmer’s cuttlefish-bites-man story [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4PbW893ik]. The most important elements of a good video story, the instructors explained, are action and engaging characters.

So where is the amazingly cool video that my classmates and I produced? Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for the other two crash courses we need to become full-fledged video producer/directors: doing an actual shoot of a real event, and editing our material in post-production, but those would make great sessions for ScienceWriters 2011.

Image: Nicholson (left) and Olson with the video reporting essentials: microphone, camera and Gorillapod.

Book authors channel Strunk & White

Robert Lee Hotz, moderator of the panel “Great science writing part II: Building the big book,” introduced the session by announcing, “We’re going to turn ourselves into a living Elements of Style.” Representing five elements were science book authors K.C. Cole (voice), Jonathan Weiner (story), Charles Seife (character), Jennifer Ouellette (structure), and Carl Zimmer (authority).

Cole cautioned writers against becoming attached to one voice. When people know that you’ve written something, she said, “that’s not a good thing.” She suggested trying on different voices, the same way that singers practice in different ranges.

Next, Weiner described the disparity between writers’ and scientists’ notion of story. While scientists seek universal patterns, writers look for a character facing an obstacle. Weaving those two notions together, he says, is a challenge for long-form science writers.

Seife spoke of characters as lamp-posts that illuminate a story and take the reader from one event to the next. He faced an unusual problem when writing a book about the number zero, which spanned more than two thousand years. “I turned zero into a character,” he says, giving the number verbs and a story arc.

Ouellette compared structure to a laser: light by itself radiates in all directions, but a laser focuses and directs the light. While she has several files of book ideas, she says, they sit there until she figures out which structure the story will take.

Finally, Zimmer gave an example of an error in his book The Tangled Bank, which incorrectly refers to one anatomist as Dutch. In "some of my nightmares," he says, people will refer to the book to look up the scientist's nationality. Book writing requires you to become a “junkie” about the subject, he says, and footnotes can show discerning readers that you’ve done your homework.