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[terpsichore]

This article by a college public-relations officer encourages faculty to promote their campus by talking to the media about their scholarship.

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/05/2009052601c.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

He's identified some of the reasons faculty don't like to talk to the media, but I think he's missed some additional big ones. For instance, he says that "Good publicity for the college is good publicity for the featured professor. "  But that's not always the case. In the sciences, professors who try to explain their work to the public risk getting a reputation for oversimplifying complex issues and self-promotion that can hurt their professional reputation. And because it seems that many reporters only want to report controversy, some faculty would just prefer to stay out of the media eye.

Have any of you had good or bad experiences with the media (that is, any that you can describe without outing yourself?) How do you handle interviews with reporters?

[barred_owl]

Have any of you had good or bad experiences with the media (that is, any that you can describe without outing yourself?) How do you handle interviews with reporters?

In the encounters I've had with reporters (newspaper and radio), the reporters have approached me with questions or requests for interviews, not the other way around.  The interest in what I was doing had more to do with public interest in the "sexy" species I studied than with my research, per se--something along the lines of the public fascination with, say, polar bears.  Polar bears are interesting, but research into polar bear genetics, perhaps, is not, from the audience's point of view.

During the newspaper interviews, I found that it helped to ask the reporters to read back from their notes so that I could be sure that there were no egregious errors in their record of my answers.  Keeping answers short was helpful, too, in terms of the accuracy of what they recorded.  These are not a fool-proof tactics, but they certainly made me more comfortable participating in the interviews.

[sugaree]

I have been contacted several times to do radio interviews. My single biggest issue is the timetable that these folks seem to work on - in other words, I am happy to prepare some comments about a given topic (if I know anything about it), but when you call me 45 minutes before you need a call-in show guest, I'm not going to make it. I require a few days, heck even a few hours prep time in order to say anything intelligible about whatever esoteric topic on which you think I am an expert.

[mended_drum]

My response is amusement.  Some of the articles published by my colleagues (and maybe one by me) in the humanities could easily be excerpted to produce shocking or offensive sound bites.  No way would we discuss these particular topics with a journalist; the risk of producing an attack piece on my field, my research or my institution would be too high.  Oversimplification can produce bad, bad things.

[bstevens]

Publicity might not be in the professor's job description but service is.  If the prof. could provide a service to the community by giving a talk or sharing some insight, they should do what they can to oblige.  I always thought that's what is meant by service, not sitting on some university committee.

[temporaryname]

I'm happy to give an interview or whatever--but the author of the article described the faculty member who didn't want to write an article during finals grading (admittedly very mildly) disparagingly? There's got to be a bit of give on both sides, I'd say.

[offthemarket]

The lesson when speaking with a journalist is to never say a single sentence, or clause, that can be taken out of context.

It's possible to construct such sentences, and I've gone though a small bit of training in this.  It sounds very awkward if you think of an interview as a conversation.  But it doesn't strike journalists as funny, as they're used to talking to media-savvy people this way all the time.

[navydad]

I once was interviewed for a local news program about an incident that had occurred on our campus. When I watched the edited version of the interview on the news I realized that they had taken parts of two sentences that I had spoken at different times in the interview, cut them, and spliced them together to make a sentence that I never actually spoke. (Did I explain that adequately?) I never would have noticed except that I remembered that the interview had been taped with only one camera that shot me from the front for half the interview and from the side for half. What gave away the edit is that the shot of me speaking the sentence in question cut from front to side during the middle of the sentence, which clued me in to the fact that the sentence was made up of parts of two different sentences. I have been told that this is a common practice in TV news and is considered acceptable as long as the meaning of the interviewee isn't changed. Since many TV "journalists" don't understand much scholarship, it seems to me that the potential for misunderstanding is high. In another TV interview I did on a fairly complex topic no one changed what I actually said, but the selective edit that was broadcast significantly misrepresented what I was trying to say even though it consisted of things I did say. I've also done live interviews, which have the advantage of being unedited. But unless you are good at this, it can take only one crack or stupid question by the interviewer to throw you off. So beware.

[stapler]

I've had some frustrating experiences with the media.  The most common issue has been gross misrepresentation of research results.  As noted above, some journalists really don't understand scholarship (and, in my case, uber-basic concepts in science).  The majority of articles written on my work have been cringe-worthy, from my perspective.  I'd be much happier dealing with the print media if they would just give me the opportunity to verify basic facts in the prepared article prior to publication.

Other issues: the common desire of journalists to sweeten their stories by bringing peripheral but "hot" topics into discussion (in my case: evolution, age of the Earth, climate change).  In preparation for my very first radio interview years ago, I cautiously spent more than a little time brushing up on details related to isotopic dating techniques, guessing that my interviewer just might steer the discussion waaaaay off course.  Sure enough, within a few minutes we were off my results and instead talking climate change and age of the Earth.

[terpsichore]

Some of these stories mirror my own (limited) experience with the media.

Ph.D. Comics had two recent items on this very topic:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1175

[renji]

I have found that most reporters are easy to work with, even if they do not completely understand my work. Most times they will let me review their copy before putting it in print.

One thing that annoys me is that other academics will read a newspaper or magazine account of my work and then criticize the work based entirely on the small snippet or an article.

I have found radio the more difficult than print media. Often their are no do overs. Boom, you are on the air.

I am doing some TV work in the coming weeks and am a bit terrified. This will be a completely new experience.

[sciencephd]

Is this a joke ?  I talk to the media as long as they will listen, and as often as they will listen.  Publicity for my research is great.

[mozman]

Is this a joke ?  I talk to the media as long as they will listen, and as often as they will listen.  Publicity for my research is great.

Double chime.

I talk to the media all the time.  Our work has been profiled in the national and international print, radio and TV news media.  I have been featured on NPR, in Discover and New Scientist Magazines, the NY Times, and have been quoted by Martin Enserink in Science, to name a few.

How is this a bad thing??  It has been wonderful for our program.  My Dean and the University President know me on sight  (in a good way).

Reporters are not stupid, and they are usually very interested in what we do - they just may not understand it.  If we can't explain what we do to a layperson, in complete but simple way, then the problem is with us, not them.  We have all gone through media training, which was very helpful.

Don't fear the press!  Work with them - good things will follow.

mm

[carebearstare]

I think this article is totally annoying. I understand that sometimes, as scholars, we are in a position to provide expertise to the general public via the media. I also understand that we can benefit from some media savviness training. No problems there. But the concern is when media visibility turns into promotion for promotion's sake. I know several high-profile faculty, who shall go unnamed, who are more focused on their next MSNBC appearance than they are on their scholarship. They've become caricatures of scholars and huge egomaniacs to boot.

My concern is when publicity guides research agendas. I think some faculty are hesitant to be in the press because of the potential of slipping down this slope.

[bacardiandlime]

I wish someone would interview me about my research! Unfortunately, I don't work on the human genome project, or anything that might cure anything, or anyone famous whose anniversary it is this year.

Academics should be more prominent in the media. How about American Academic? Simon Cowell, Drew Gilpin Faust and Stanley Fish judge everyone's presentations and decide who gets an NEH grant.