From lab to newsroom
Students Jonathan Davies and Kristy Baron spent the summer working at CBC radio, thanks to AHFMR's Media Fellowship Program.
Typical summer employment for most university science students involves running countless experiments in labs, battling the elements during field work, or staring at computer screens for hours every day.
This past summer, however, wasn't typical for Jonathan Davies, an M.Sc. student in the neuroscience program at the University of Calgary, or for Kristy Baron, a B.Sc. student in immunology and infection. Both traded in their lab coats for digital recorders and spiral notebooks—the basic tools of a journalist.
Davies and Baron were the 2007 recipients of the AHFMR Media Fellowship, which provides a stipend for two students to spend 12 weeks as reporters and researchers on science and medical stories at one of the province's major news organizations. Since 1991, when the program began, 29 students have been given this unique opportunity. Most of them have worked at CBC outlets. In the summer of 2007 Davies was posted at CBC Radio in Calgary, and Baron at CBC Radio in Edmonton.
They applied to the program for similar reasons: both saw a need for better explanation of scientific stories to the public. "When I got into science, I saw scientists who were doing fascinating work, but doing a lousy job of communicating it," says Davies. "You can take the most interesting research in the world, and if scientists can't communicate it well, it's almost pointless."
Baron wanted to share her enthusiasm for scientific discovery. "When I think something is cool, I want someone else to also think it's cool—making people care about it, making them want to learn," she explains.
One of the goals of the Media Fellowship Program is to enhance the coverage of issues concerning science and technology by the media. Davies and Baron both used their specific scientific expertise to present their own weekly radio series—projects which likely wouldn't have been produced otherwise.
Baron's series was entitled Microbes that live inside you and sometimes make you feel like crap. Every week she interviewed a different professor about his or her research on a particular bacterium or virus. "I've always wanted to teach people about infectious diseases, and I got to be the person who set that up. That was a dream come true," Baron recalls.
In the series Grey Matters: A look at the aging brain, Davies also had the opportunity to develop an idea about which he is passionate. With so much attention focused on heart problems as people age, Davies felt it was time that more people knew about the changes their brains undergo, and ways of protecting their brains.
Joining busy newsrooms as novice journalists was certainly an exciting adventure for both students. There was all the radio jargon and technical skills to learn, as well as all the agony of waiting for prospective interview subjects who might or might not be available. But the most challenging aspects of the job didn't turn out to be the technical issues. Davies found that "the hardest thing is how to get a very complex idea across—very quickly, in very simple terms."
He was certainly put to the test when asked to prepare his own master's degree supervisor for an on-air interview about the physiology of chronic pain. "I was thinking, this pretty much makes or breaks my program. If I can't do this, if I can't communicate my own research—well, then I've failed." Davies didn't fail. In fact, he received a congratulatory call from the representative of a support group for sufferers from chronic pain, thanking him for the good work.
Both Baron and Davies recognize the value of the new skills they have developed. Baron hopes to pursue a career in public health, where the ability to communicate clearly is paramount. Davies, who recently received an AHFMR Studentship to support his research, also acknowledges the benefit his science will derive from the media fellowship: "I'll know how to sell my ideas. I'll know how to communicate them effectively. I'll know how to maintain people's interest. That's only going to make my science stronger, and it's going to make me a more successful scientist."
Two alumnae of AHFMR's Media Fellowship Program now write for Research News: Tara Narwani, who wrote this story, and Erin O'Connell.