Interview with Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright
Post-doctoral researcher and science communication officer for the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge and the astronomy researcher for the Royal Observatory in Greenwich (full biog)
- What experience do you have when talking to the media?
- How have things progressed in terms of how often you’re contacted?
- Have you had any particularly bad or particularly good media experiences?
- Do you think the reason that you’ve always had quite good experiences is directly because of this BA fellowship?
- What’s the one thing that you know now that had you known in the beginning, would have been really, really helpful?
- Have you ever contacted the media with a story?
- How do you prepare for an interview?
- How do you communicate what can be quite abstract ideas to a journalist writing for a lay audience?
- When you’re talking to journalists, do they ever ask you to speculate? Do you respond to that or do you just not do that at all?
- What can scientists do to improve their relationship with the media?
What experience do you have when talking to the media?
LJW: I’ve got varied experience, actually. I started as a student through the outreach activities and the science communication work that I was doing as a PhD student. I was contacted by the media because I’m an astronomer. It’s quite a public-friendly topic and something people are generally very interested in. So I began very briefly being contacted by the media to talk about what I was doing. The first instance was a subject relating to my PhD. I was looking at working out how our own galaxy, the Milky Way, formed from the Big Bang and an animation that I produced interested the media and consequently I had a number of interviews relating to that.
How has that progressed in terms of how often you’re contacted? Obviously it’s bloomed since then, don’t you work as an adviser now at Greenwich Observatory?
LJW: Yes that’s right. I’m providing content advice to the new development at the Royal Observatory. It’s who you know as much as what you know, and consequently, if you become a media-friendly scientist, then they will contact you again, even if it’s a subject outside of your field. One of the advantages I had was I worked as a BA media fellow with the Financial Times. I actually saw the other side of things and that made me much more aware of what one needed to do in order to facilitate and help the media as much as possible.
Have you had any particularly bad or particularly good media experiences?
LJW: On the whole I would say my experiences with the media were good but one has to be familiar with the environment that they’re working with and the sort of constraints that they’re working under as well. I did have one bad experience with a digital radio program, Radio 1 Extra. Astronomers tend to shy away from the subject of Astronomy versus Astrology but I decided to bite the bullet, shall we say, and the interviewer basically got it wrong; from getting my name wrong to getting everything else wrong. That was one of the worst experiences but it wasn’t in a particularly derogatory or bad way, it’s just that the research hadn’t been done and it was live.
Do you think the reason that you’ve always had quite good experiences is directly because of this BA fellowship? So you know that they only have about five hours to get a story in etc.?
LJW: Exactly. I think my usefulness to the media has increased hugely since I did the fellowship. I was doing radio interviews and newspaper interviews before I took the fellowship, but just because I enjoy talking to people and I’m fairly comfortable in that environment, they seemed to work. But certainly post the BA media fellowship, I’ve become much more useful. I’m much more comfortable as an interviewee rather than an interviewer.
What’s the one thing that you know now that had you known in the beginning, would have been really, really helpful?
LJW: I think the one thing that I’ve become much more comfortable with doing is, when a journalist phones up, saying to them, “Ok, what do you want, how long have you got?”. Not being afraid to actually question them as to what there constraints are and saying, “What do you want me to talk about, what is the focus going to be?” Then I’m prepared for the sort of questions that they’re going to be asking. I think preparation and not being on the back foot is an important thing. Be prepared to say to them “What’s the focus of your article going to be? What’s the slant?” and then being able to say “Well actually, I don’t agree with that and therefore I don’t feel like I can give you that sort of information”. If that’s going to be their slant anyway then that’s when an article is going to come out that you’re potentially not happy with; because you didn’t ask those questions in the first place.
So have you ever contacted the media with a story?
LJW: I have. They’ve tended to be science communication, so publicity more than stories, but I have provided my colleagues with the services they have, helping them write press releases and subsequently contacting the media in order to fulfil that role and get their story into the media. On the whole, I work quite a lot with press officers for the university and so I think that’s quite an important relationship to have as a scientist.
Make sure that you know your press officer or your press office and understand the role they play, because they are very good at facilitating and writing the press releases for you. There is a skill to that and I think that’s something else that we as scientists can learn; that there is this intermediary that has been trained to fulfil that role.
How do you prepare for an interview?
LJW: Well I kind of alluded to that a little bit. How I would prepare for an interview is to make sure I know the subject. It depends on the program or the journalist you’re working with. I don’t think any journalist will tell you the questions in advance because it misses the sparkle then. But find out the slant, find out exactly what they want to know. If it’s a subject that’s outside my field, then I would say to them, “Could you phone me back in two hours, I need to have a little read around this, talk to my colleagues about this and I’ll get back to you”. And making that time available to do whatever that important thing is.
Something else I’ve learnt, if you do release a story then make yourself available. Make sure you have a mobile phone or something because if they do want to write that story, they will need to get hold of you yesterday rather than in three weeks time.
How do you communicate what can be quite abstract ideas to a journalist writing for a lay audience?
LJW: It depends on your subject. As I say, in astronomy it becomes quite easy because there is a slight familiarity there. You’ve probably heard all of this before, but analogies tend to be good, trying to relate what you’re doing to the familiar and also making the journalist or the people that they’re going to be writing for, make a connection to their everyday lives. It’s something which is more difficult to do with astronomy to make the connection with everyday life, but if they see the relevance then they’re going to be more interested and it’s also going to resonate and come home to them what you’re trying to talk about.
When you’re talking to journalists, do they ever ask you to speculate? Do you respond to that or do you just not do that at all?
LJW: Again, in my field, speculation is less of a problem. They do ask you but it’s not a life and death scenario in astronomy and therefore I tend to be careful but real, for example “The evidence isn’t there as yet but one can imagine that…” I think it’s better to be careful and speculate rather than have them put a concluding sentence that they’ve totally pulled out of nowhere. If you can sort of meet them halfway without going totally wacky and off the wall, then I think that’s a safer bet, but obviously, if you’re dealing with, biological, medical issues, something like that, then I can understand that potentially one has to be very careful with the ethical and if you suddenly say, “We’re going to cure this next year”, then you’re going to be in big trouble.
What can scientists do to improve their relationship with the media?
LJW: I think the biggest thing, relating again to the fact that I’ve been on the other side of the fence, is to understand the working environment of the media and understand what they’re trying to do. The biggest eye-opener for me was learning that most of the newspapers that we read have a reading age of ten, which makes you aware of what these journalists are trying to do. They’re trying to convert cutting-edge research into something a ten year old can understand, which is one heck of a leap in communication. And also as I’ve said, making yourself available and also being aware that they have deadlines that could be half an hour, two hours, rather than our usual journal timescales of maybe a month.
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Last updated: October 05 2006
