Transitioning into scientific journalism
Vanita Gupta
Wednesday, 30 January 2008 21:38 UTC
I am a post-doctoral fellow and want to transition my career from the bench to journalism. What qualities, skills, and experience does it take to break into scientific editing/writing (other than the basic required language skills and experience with publication and peer review)? Aside from applying to open positions, what does one do to get a job that moves towards journalism? How does one stand out in a pool of applicants for a single editorial position? Some have advised me to go into medical writing (advertising or pharma), as opposed to science writing, because it is easier to get a job, but my love is in basic research sciences and promoting basic science to the community at large. What do you think about medical writing? Does medical writing provide one with skills that can be translated into a science editor position? Is it possible to get into scientific writing through experience in medical writing and advertising? I would appreciate any advice about how to effectively make this transition and what steps to take to move my career in that direction. Thanks!
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Replies
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Hi Vanita,
Thanks for your questions.Just to clarify the terms here, by saying ‘journalism’, you’re talking about working for news organizations (magazines, TV, newspapers, online, radio, the news sections of journals such as Nature and Science). As a journalist, you can write about both science and medicine.
Science and medical writing (I don’t distinguish between the two) includes PR work for companies, granting agencies like the NIH, or universities and other research institutions. It also includes grant writing, working at science museums, writing patient education materials, etc.
So if you’re interested in writing about basic science for the general public, you can do that either as a journalist or as a science writer working for a university or a place like the NIH. (Although I would say that science journalists don’t write about basic science much these says, unless they work for journals like Nature. Science journalists in the mainstream media find themselves being pushed to write more business or medical stories these days.) It just depends on how free and independent you want to be. If you want to write in a balanced, relatively unbiased way, then journalism is the way to go. If you don’t mind writing articles that are perhaps more promotional or one-sided in nature, then you can work as a writer.
The career path and required skills for both are similar. Both require good writing and story-telling, an eye for what is interesting and compelling for the general reader and the ability to meet deadlines. Journalists, in addition, do require good reporting skills: the ability to go out and dig up/break stories, develop and maintain sources, and get people who might not want to talk to open up to you. An inherent curiosity and the ability to see the big picture are crucial.
To get jobs in this area, you need writing samples, or clips. Freelance writing, doing internships and even writing your own blog are good ways to do that. Just try and find any place that that would be willing to listen to your story ideas and publish you: your university’s press office, school or departmental newsletters, a community newspaper, etc. Several places offer internships too, like Nature. There are also several good science writing/journalism graduate programs, a couple of them in NYC. A good resource is the National Association of Science Writers.
A lot of journalists move into PR writing and I haven’t heard of too many people who move from PR writing into journalism. If you’re heart is set on becoming a journalist, I would recommend shooting for that first.
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Thanks for the response. It’s very helpful. I now have some more ideas on how to proceed.
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On the other hand, if you are interested in an editing career, for example handling manuscripts submitted to a journal, or commissioning scientists to write reviews, there are plenty of opportunities in these areas, also. We regularly advertise open positions at our journals at the Nature jobs website, which also contains a lot of advice on careers, including those in science publishing.
The main things we look for in editors are: a good academic cv; the ability to summarise a paper, to decide on its relative significance and to be able to defend your decision; and a deep interest in science and its communication.
If you are interested in a career in science writing or editing, it is a very good idea to do some work while you are still a postdoc, as this will certainly help your application to stand out. Examples include: writing reviews or short articles about scientific research; organising scientific meetings or journal clubs; and outreach, that is, talking about science in forums such as high schools or public meetings.
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