logo
Home About us Get involved Voice of Young Science Donate

Interview with Dr Carly Stevens

Author of the paper ‘Impact of nitrogen on the species richness of grasslands’ published in Science in March 2000 (full biog)






You first started dealing with the media during your PhD. Is that right?

CS: About midway through my PhD I had some really exciting results. I went to a meeting with Science Magazine, obviously a really top journal, and they asked me if I would do a press conference for them but I didn’t really have any concept of what that meant at all. I didn’t go looking to get my work into the media, it was completely unexpected.

You submitted that to Science?

CS: Yes, and it got accepted. Science held a press conference for my paper. I was so lucky because I was at the Open University at the time and they had a press officer who took me under his wing and looked after me and helped me with writing press releases. We had press releases going out from the university, from Science magazine, from the research council and suddenly my life had gone from sitting at my desk analysing data to writing press releases and dealing with the media. It was a complete change.



So after that initial press conference you started to get a lot of media enquiries?

CS: Yes, first I gave a press conference in London and all the major newspapers and newsgroups came along. In some ways that was a good thing as it dealt with a lot of people in one go, but at the time I don’t think I really appreciated that. I got back to my office after the press conference to excited calls from my office mates saying “Nature has been on the phone, can you call them back?” and “so and so newspaper has called”, we never expected anything like that. I was really dumped in the deep end. I was doing radio interviews over the phone, and all sorts. We got on the front page of The Guardian and every major newspaper ran it the next day. Within a few days it had a knock-on effect and we had local press coming back to us to get the local angle, and international press, international radio stations. It really spread.

Since then have you done any more media stuff?

CS: I haven’t done much. I have had the odd journalist call me up for a comment. Nothing much. Because I am a young scientist who people know about, I have done quite a few things like career profiles for various organisations trying to promote ecology, or promote various aspects. Obviously the universities, particularly the Open University, are quite keen to use me as an example so I think once people have got your details you are called upon when people need you for that sort of thing.



You said you got the odd call. Is that to comment on other people’s research?

CS: Yes, what I found is that after the initial paper I had a few calls to comment on things and generally they weren’t really things that were in my field that I could comment on. It seemed a bit hit and miss. They asked me to comment on the algae in the Diana memorial fountain. I appreciate it’s hard for non-experts to understand, but it is absolutely nothing to do with what I do. I know nothing about algae although I guess I know a bit more than someone who knows nothing about biology. After a while it slowed down and stopped and I dropped off the list. Having been in the media for such a specific topic, a single event, that’s the way it goes.

Would you say that your media experience was good? Did you have any bad stories?

CS: I don’t know if I was lucky. We were very careful to make sure we explained things thoroughly and if journalists wanted to talk to us we did talk to them. We didn’t have any bad or vastly inaccurate stories that came out. We took a lot of care to ensure we explained things in a way non-scientists could understand. Having help with things like writing press releases was really good as the media-related person I was working with didn’t know anything about science at all really. He would say “Well that’s all very well but I haven’t got a clue what you are talking about” and so I guess that’s partly why we had such a good experience. Overall it was really positive. I’m not sure it has benefited my career in any way, but looking back it was good. I did find it all a bit worrying at the time.



Thinking about yourself back then and the experience you gained in your dealings with the media, what do you wish you had known before you started?

CS: I had heard so many horror stories. ‘Watch out you will get misquoted’ or ‘they’ll just make things up’. Journalists had really been made out to be the bad guys to me but I certainly didn’t have that experience at all and any mistakes that were made I believe were genuine errors in reporting. They were not journalists setting out on their own story or having their own agenda. I think if I could have been told you don’t have to worry about that at all, that you just have to go out there and tell your story as clearly as possible, it would have made it a lot less stressful. I was dumped in the deep end a little and everyone was nice and genuinely trying to get an understanding of everything.


back to contributors page

    Last updated: October 05 2006
© Sense About Science. You may only download the content for your own personal non-commercial use. You are not permitted to copy, adapt or change in any way the content of these web pages without the prior written permission of Sense About Science.