By Sarah Neveux, Neuroscience Student, Washington State University Vancouver
From blog.savesfbay.org
“BIG NEWS!”
Is that all it takes to make something worth a few minutes of your time? Would you open your CNN or BBC app if you got a notification saying “SUPER IMPORTANT NEWS!!”? Personally, I would need more than that. Especially if that “big news” was going to use scientific words that would make my head spin.
News, in the purest form, has to be information. That being said, not all information should be plastered all over every front page. So who chooses, from the large amounts of scientific information, what is worthy enough to be news? According to Cornelia Dean in her book, Am I Making Myself Clear?, for those scientific factoids to be deemed “newsworthy”, they should to fall into one, if not many, of the following categories.
Extent – Where it impacts more people, like the Superbowl.
Intensity – When it’s extreme, like the Seahawks winning the Superbowl by 35 points.
Consequence – When the repercussions will be drastic, such as Marijuana being legalized.
Eminence or celebrity – Because everyone wants to know every detail of Justin Bieber’s arrest.
Proximity – a.k.a. the “local angle” or better known as “Portland’s Annual Naked Bike Ride.”
Timeliness – “It’s news today if no one will care tomorrow!”
Novelty – You don’t want to hear the same thing twice, right?
Human Interest – I should not have to explain this.
Currency – Almost the opposite of Novelty, but it’s when a theme that has been around for a long time is now in it’s golden years (like Betty White) and suddenly becomes the “thing” that everyone is talking about, like Global Warming (or Betty White).
Now that we’ve covered what makes information newsworthy, let’s talk about how we make it newsworthy.
So how does information transform from factoids in a Word document to a catchy and funny, but still scientific-sounding news headline? Information, specifically news and journalism pieces, have to be crafted in a way that captures the reader or viewer’s attention. There are quite a few different theories, but Randy Olson describes a prominent one in his book, Don’t Be Such a Scientist. He explains that you need to hook your reader with an arouse-and-fulfill pattern: get your reader excited by making the science sexy and then fulfill all their hopes and dreams with some hard core facts that will blow their minds!
The only problem is this method can only get you so far with readers. Scientists need to communicate their findings and the importance, not just throw the facts at you in some sexy lingerie. This communication of science, as far as journalism or news goes, needs to be done in way that allows for information to be delivered over an extended period of time.
This method of communication is storytelling.
Olson explains storytelling as part science and part art. The science part would be considered the story structure, or the patterns and rules of how you present the information. The art of your scientific journalism is the character of your story – what emotions are you wanting to convey to your audience? What do you want them to remember 30 years down the road? There needs to be that one flavor of your story that touches the very essence of their humanity. Both of these aspects are needed for science to be communicated well with the public.
All of these things we touched on today – newsworthiness, extent, celebrity, art, structure, and more – are just the beginnings of understanding science journalism. Hopefully, the concept of science in the news has become less intimidating through the reading of this blog post.
You don’t need a Ph.D. in astrophysics to read or write about scientific news, but you do need to stay on your toes. A study or experiment may be newsworthy and make the headlines, but that doesn’t make it truth!