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Writing stories based on press releases has its disadvantages. You're in danger of accepting a spoon-fed version of research instead of what might actually be the truth. You're also run the danger of being unoriginal, of writing about stories that every other reporter has had the chance to see instead of diligently finding letting the world know of news no one else might have found otherwise.
Still, I read press releases because I think it's important to know of as much science research as possible, even if I don't report it, to keep myself informed on the state-of-the-art. Also, if I do find a tidbit worth pitching as a story to editors that late at night, I might get ahead of everyone else with my pitch and land an assignment to help me pay my mortgage. Early bird catches the worm, after all. (Also, I'm a night owl, so I usually go to bed about that time anyhow.)
Staying up until the dead of night for work might seem extreme, and ridiculous. I'll be honest, I don't always do this, but I do it often enough to consider it part of my schedule. So why do it? The thing is, I love my work, and think it's fun, which means I often work for fun. Science writing is like an endless exploration of all the mysteries the universe has to offer, a way to constantly enthrall my roving mind. As bad or as dull as the world can get, science writing has shown me there's always something extraordinary on the horizon.
After a night's sleep, I wake up and immediately scan my email to handle any pressing concerns that might otherwise distract me from work the rest of the day. This usually involves looking at any other press releases that might have drifted into my inbox overnight, or getting emailed responses to questions I sent researchers earlier, or reading replies my editors sent me regarding story pitches. I try and dash off emails that need quick responses-for instance, acceptances of story assignments, or follow-up questions to researchers in far-off time zones before they head home and are inaccessible for comment.
If there are any stories that need to be filed for early deadlines, I try and finish them if I hadn't completed a rough draft or polish them if I had, and I email them to editors. I then turn to looking for story ideas and writing pitches for stories. This involves skimming hundreds of titles and abstracts of papers online. As a freelance writer, I'm always looking for stories that staff writers and other freelance writers haven't found yet and might already be writing up themselves. This involves reading a lot of abstracts, and writing interesting pitches as quickly as possible before someone else submits the same idea.
It is a very tricky question deciding what makes one paper more interesting than another, something that mostly takes experience to handle. The easiest way to answer is to know whom you might be writing for. As a freelance writer, I write for many different publications-for instance, Scientific American, or Wired. I know, from reading many of their stories, what their editors and readers like. Different publications have readerships with at times very different interests-a subject that might fascinate the audience of Scientific American might bore the audience of Wired, and vice versa. I basically look at a paper and think, "Might any of the readers at the places I write for be interested in this?"
Having a science background is obviously deeply valuable at this stage. Long hours reading science textbooks from childhood to adulthood has left me comfortable writing about a wide range of fields-biology, archaeology, paleontology, physics, astronomy, technology, psychology, geology, and to a certain extent chemistry-and able to decode a title or abstract and decide if it might be interesting. Keeping track of the latest discoveries in science also helps me know if a paper might represent a newsworthy advance in the field.
If I see a title or abstract I find interesting, I download the paper and scan it quickly-a nice benefit of being a science writer is that I have full access to all journals from publishers such as Elsevier and Wiley. If that confirms to me that the paper's worth pitching, I write an email to editors as short as one or two sentences and as long as three to six paragraphs describing the findings and why it might make an interesting story they'd want me to write.
I don't usually call the authors of the paper up at that point to interview them-I usually wait for an assignment before conducting interviews, since I don't want to do the work only to find out no one wants the story, especially since that might disappoint the researcher in question and make me look like a flake. It's important to not look like a flake in order to maintain as much credibility as possible. Freelance writers (or all journalists, really) are only as good as their reputation-how much sources are willing to talk with them, and how much editors are willing to accept their stories-so I think it's pretty important to seem as professional and competent as possible.
With the advent of blogging, there are more science writers than ever now who don't interview sources for stories. I myself feel deeply uncomfortable doing that. To me, the job of a reporter involves more than simply reporting news-it's to show readers things they could never see by themselves, such as the halls of power, war zones, intimate moments, a person's thoughts, and in the case of science journalism, the distant past, the far future, remote galaxies, the insides of atoms, and places that might have been but never were. At the very least, that to me involves talking with researchers, to hopefully reveal insights about their work that readers might not get otherwise from reading their papers.
There are a number of additional, practical reasons to interview scientists for stories. I often need clarification regarding key parts of papers. Papers in major journals are often very short due to space constraints, so I want researchers to elaborate on what went on. And there are often many unanswered questions papers raise that scientists are trying to answer in as-yet unpublished research, and I can get answers as to the status of that work to help inform readers about the broader context of a piece of work.
If I get an assignment from my editors, I write a skeleton of that story based on a paper, prepare a list of questions based on what I need to fill out that skeleton, and fire off emails with those questions to researchers and call them if needed. (The questions I ask are many and varied, and will be the topic of a future blog post!)
I spend the rest of the day conducting research, finishing stories, waiting for sources to get back to me, conducting interviews, answering editors' questions and revising drafts. My research typically involves fully reading the papers I'm writing about to glean as many important and interesting details as possible, as well as any other papers referred to in that paper that might help me fill out a story with context. I also research topics via the usual suspects-Google, Wikipedia, as well as more authoritative sites such as NASA's or the Smithsonian's-but I trust none of that until I verify it with the scientists or a paper.
The minute I get a story assignment, I prepare a folder on my computer for it, whose name consists of, in order: the story's due date; two or three words describing the story; the assigned word length of the story; and the publication I'm writing that story for. This, respectively: helps me keep deadlines; makes the story findable; gives me an idea of how much I should write; and reminds me who the audience of that story is so I write it with the appropriate tone.
If I have any spare time-and waiting for people to get back to me often leaves me with a lot of time sitting and doing nothing-I read science news to figure out what stories have already been written so that I don't pitch them to those outlets. I also catch up on social media such as Twitter and Facebook to socialize and learn what might be going on in the rest of the world. Honestly, I also watch a lot of TV and DVDs-I'm one of those people who needs a certain level of stimulation to keep productive.
Hopefully all this will get done by the end of the average work day of 5 p.m., but to be honest, writers keep odd hours, so I might very well work into the evening. Again, work is (often) fun.
Due to the international nature of science, I might very well have to interview people on the opposite side of the world from me, which means phone calls at 1 or 2 a.m. I then wait for the emails of compiled press releases from EurekAlert, and start my day over again. No rest for the wicked.
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Image credit: Quinn Dombrowski (from Flickr).
