My first first-author paper was published last Monday, April 6th – I’m so excited! It was published in Nature Astronomy, a daughter journal to Nature which publishes new, high-impact research in topics related to astronomy. Positively thrilling! I had a fun week leading up to the 6th doing press for the paper, which was a first for me. I took science journalism last semester and it was interesting to be on the other side of the interview. I learned a lot in last week's process and thought it would be worth sharing what happened; including some of the highlights and pitfalls.
I started by emailing Mikayla Mace, science writer for the University of Arizona Marketing and Communications department to ask if she would write an article for the university to put out. This was suggested to me by my faculty mentor, Vishnu Reddy. Mikayla wrote an article on his work in planetary defense when she worked for the Arizona Daily Star. She was interested in writing a piece on my research and said she would pitch it the next day in her news meeting. She interviewed me by phone March 12th and I was glad to find her easy to talk to. That interview made me think of an assignment in my journalism class where I interviewed a post-doc in the hydrology department about her new research about mountain-block recharge and the implications for Arizona water reserves. Not familiar with mountain-block recharge? Neither was I. (It's the flow of groundwater from the mountains into valley and flatland aquifers). Being a non-expert in that field meant that I had a lot of basic questions, which were a little intimidating to ask. Going into my meeting with Mikayla, the shoe was on the other foot and I had the challenge of relaying my research in a way that was understandable. On top of that, my interview experience meant that I had some insights into the kinds of things she might be hoping I would say (some good quotable quotes to pepper into her article).
Ultimately, Mikayla was not able to write her piece for the university. Her editor put her on a COVID-19 piece last minute and she had to abdicate. The university did publish an article about my new research. The article was written by the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, but the U. Arizona journalist asked me to provide quotes for two places in the article. As I learned from my journalism class, this is a) ideal for me, since I get to choose how I am quoted b) ideal for the writer since I will say the exact thing to underscore the point and move the article forward, and c) not really journalism and more like public relations, since news subjects shouldn’t write their own piece.
On Wednesday, April 1st, Lisa Grossman at Science News emailed me seeking an interview. This seemed pretty exciting and I emailed my advisor, Tommi Koskinen, for advice on how to proceed. He replied, with uncharacteristic informality, “Oh boy, I hope you are ready for this.” This didn’t do much to put my anxieties to rest. He did offer to join the interview, which I welcomed. He pointed out that I would need to brush up on specifics about the mission that are not directly related to my work and that could be of interest to the press. When it came time for the interview on April 2nd, it turned out to be an enjoyable experience. I found Lisa to be very nice and professional. She seemed like the kind of person I’d like to be friends with – quick, open, thoughtful and with what I imagine is a very broad understanding things in the universe. Looking her up now, I see that she has a degree in astronomy from Cornell and a graduate certificate in science writing from UC Santa Cruz. Yeah, she seems like a bad-ass. She asked tough questions and I was glad to trade off with Tommi in answering them. Lisa emailed me with a follow-up question. When I replied I asked her if we could see a copy of the article before it went up. She let me know that it is against Science News’ policy to send out full story drafts before publication, in the name of journalistic integrity. There’s that difference between journalism and P.R. Here is a link to her article:
Passant Rabie from Inverse.com emailed me April 3rd to request an interview. By now I was feeling more confident and I had a nice time speaking with her over the phone. She wrote up this (gorgeously typeset) article:
Before I could say anything about my paper being published myself, my friend, Alex, found this on his news feed and posted it to my Facebook page. I felt famous.
I got two inquiries about the article from foreign press. One was from Benoit Rey at the online French magazine, Science & Vie, which hasn't come out yet. Another was from Roman Zahkarov from the online Russian magazine, in-Space. He reached out to me for details about the paper and I sent him a summary. Do you speak Russian? You could read this and tell me how it came out:
Do you want to know who my favorite interview was with, what happened when reporters got things wrong or what it was like working with NASA on press? Read Hot off the press, Part II.
Commentaires