Hi Aaron, All, The market right now isn't that great for Science Writers professionally, so they can be few and far between, and obviously, they're overworked (just like us!). The National Association of Science Writers and Eurekalert can be good avenues to get others to start writing about your work. Because of time constraints, science journalists usually don't have a lot of time to search for your work, or wait on responses, so a good thing to do is to follow these guidelines:
1. *Put up press releases or contact with emails that are already written for a lay audience.* This means starting with why people should care/what makes this cool. Be sure to include your preferred contact info; they may use part of this for quotes and want to contact you for a follow-up. 2. *Don't firehose everyone* by putting up/contacting a journalist about everything, even the little stuff. Make sure you've got a good story and the 'right' to tell it (check with your publisher about embargo dates, etc.). Otherwise, you risk overselling/breaching agreements/being ignored after a bit. 3. *When a journalist contacts you, get back to them quickly.* Their deadlines are tight, so respect that. If someone calls, you can take 5-10 min to compose yourself and get ideas together, but don't wait too long. If you get back to them quicker, it does 2 things: 1) helps you gain a bit more control about how the pitch of the story will go, and 2) it encourages them to contact you again if they need to (for this work) or in the future (for new stuff/outside opinions on the work of others). 4. *Make your work 'timely'! *If there is something in current events or a major holiday/season/sporting event coming up that it relates to, this will make the 'sell' easier. Ex. If you work on acoustic pollution, there's an angle for talking about a big NASCAR race. If you work in mating, bringing up summer lovin'/spring flings can be good, too. There's lots of stuff, and you might have to fight a bit of anthropomorphism, but it can work in your favor, too. Be creative here! 5. *Write about your work yourself now.* If you've got a blog or website, go ahead and start writing things there. A journalist who can Google and see you're able to talk to the public in understandable, interesting terms is more likely to want to work with you. You're less of an unknown gamble on whether they can quickly glean what they need from you and get a good story out. (Once you've got some content, don't be afraid to email and invite folks to read there) Hope this helps, and good luck! Emily On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 7:36 PM, Aaron T. Dossey <bugoc...@gmail.com> wrote: > Why won't journalists speak to or write about scientists, while we > languish and fade away into obscurity while others (richkids, cute college > kids, cute couples etc.) get rich and famous off our work? > > What is the secret to getting a journalist to write your name, even if > only on a napkin? > > ATD of ATB and ISI > -- > Aaron T. Dossey, Ph.D. > Biochemistry and Molecular Biology > Founder/Owner: All Things Bugs LLC > Capitalizing on Low-Crawling Fruit from Insect-Based Innovation > ABOUT: http://allthingsbugs.com/People > LinkedIn: > https://www.linkedin.com/pub/all-things-bugs-dr-aaron-t-dossey/53/775/104 > FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/Allthingsbugs > ISI: https://www.facebook.com/InvertebrateStudiesInstitute > PHONE: 1-352-281-3643 > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Emily G. Weigel, PhD NSF CURE Postdoctoral Fellow Department of Biology Spelman College Reviewing Editor, *The American Biology Teacher* choosyfemale.com 404-788-2023 Office: 283 Science Center Follow @choosy_female on Twitter! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
