By Sarani Rangarajan
Moderated by Czerne Reid, the session "Straight to the Source: Helping Scientists Speak Directly to the Press" was full of useful advice to PIOs. To me, the biggest message was delivered by Dennis Meredith, who said that scientists should get communication training rather than just media training, since "media is becoming one of the many outlets for scientists."
Meredith recommended a change in the culture of PIOs — that they become Public Information Education Information Officers: Scientists don't trust journalists, pollsters and lawyers. PIOs need to overcome the idea that scientists think it is "stooping to popularize science". Give scientists tools other than just jargon and research.
Advice to scientists: Try to adopt a visual analogy. Think visually: If you "say cow, see cow."
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Show the popular trend that resonates — the victim, something the audience can relate to.
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Scientists should recognize that even other scientists are laymen in other fields: and visuals help you communicate to that 'lay' audience.
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Do not show "the whole damn herd." Don't put the image from the scientific journal in the slide, just the bit you're going to talk about; and put the point of the image at the top.
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Audiences live in a sophisticated visual environment, so you have to have visuals that are at least professional quality.
"Scientists don't exist in a culture that values clear writing," Meredith said. PIOs should encourage them to speak and write simply and ask them what solutions their research has to offer. He ended by saying, "writing should be like a warm hug; their readers should be at their heart all the time."
Alan Boyle, Science Editor of MSNBC.com, recommends that PIOs be available and push for scientists to be available directly to the public through a blog. "I see it as a good thing … not just to the public but to generalists as well," he said, giving the example of Tom Holtz, who was willing to talk about paleontologists' research, and Michael E. Mann, who joined Twitter and became active in social media.
How do you train scientists?
There are programs where scientists can get training. Dennis Schatz of the Pacific Science Center talked about the “Portal to the Public” NSF-funded project (there is also a fellowship program offered by the center), which gets people involved in face-to-face interactions and sensitizes the scientist to good communication ideas, such as the fact that the same words mean completely different things when different people speak them. For example, the word “wave” could be a wave around a stadium, a physics-mathematical wave, an ocean wave. We are all experts in something, and we bring our own blind spots.
Helping scientists cope with the media
Bruce Goldberger (his resume must be dozens of pages long!) talked about his experience as a scientist facing the media. The takeaway was to get scientists physically comfortable, clothed appropriately, get them there early, encourage them to "speak deliberately" and in layperson language, and finally to be enthusiastic and to have an internet presence. His talk seemed directed to scientists. Goldberger has a heavy media presence and all of his strategies may not be applicable to all scientists, but other things he said were:
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"Some people come off as pompous, (but the secret to my success is that) I am always myself."
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"Scientists need to develop and fine-tune their public speaking skills, and that where we're lacking … they are afraid of lights and cameras, they are afraid of the microphone."
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"Practice makes perfect … I was prepped and ready to answer the question … it's good to talk to the group you're going to be talking to ahead of time."
How can a PIO make his job easier? Although he doesn't have experience with PIOs helping him out (he repeatedly said, "media do come to me"), he said a PIO could "help bring appreciation for some obscure finding."
How can a PIO help someone who is afraid of the lights, cameras, etc.? "I don't know … maybe get them comfortable. Hold their hand."
Where are the stories?
A way to generate stories from what scientists are doing is to look ahead. If as a PIO you know what is going on in research at your institution, then you can sort of prime the pump, Boyle said. Don’t give the story away, but have conversations with journalists that can set up the upcoming story. Rather than looking at journalists as people to use, the critical thing is to "develop those relationships with journalists. Even if you're not involved in that research, you can become one of those people who can put that research in perspective.”
The scientist is not just a resource to talk about his research, but a valuable person to explain or clarify the background behind some field. (Bruce Goldberger, for example, said that he spends a lot of time on the phone doing that.) So, Boyle asks scientists their opinions on his pieces, and sometimes gets recommendations that he considers feeding back into his story, and sometimes gets story ideas from those talks. They're also a good source to find visualizations that can help elucidate the research.
I came away with the idea that training was available for those who were willing, and that PIOs should focus on improving scientists' native communication skills and comfort level with dealing with people in general and the media training would follow.
