The last page

Well that is it. Yesterday I was Jean Adams from The Times. On Monday I will be Jean Adams from Newcastle University again. No more struggles with incomprehensible geology research reports, no more flicking through the paper to see if my story made it.

The Times offered some temporary work next week. They were willing to pay £70 a day. I’m not sure how that compares to what I get paid by the university, but five weeks of paid leave is generous enough. I think I probably need to go back and build up a bit more good will before I try for another little adventure.

It has been frustrating (all those stories written and not printed), boring (remember the pictures?), exciting (my name in The Times), enlightening (press conferences with scientists who did and didn’t know how to sell their story to the papers), and entertaining (the prolonged discussion in the press room about whether the Pope thinks aliens could go to heaven). 

I will miss the pace of the work, the challenge of getting to grips with something new every day, the struggle to try harder and learn more in the hope that maybe this time my work will make the grade. In many ways it’s like academia – you read, you listen to people, you question, you try to think of a new angle, you write, you submit your work, sometimes you hit the jackpot, mostly you get rejected. But the cycle is so much quicker, the gratification so much faster, and the opportunity to brood over the rejection so much less that I feel it could be a good sidestep. Maybe just for a year or two until I got bored with it too. But I would be willing to give it a go.

If you see a job for a rookie reporter, let me know.

Off his brief

On Thursday The Right Honorable David Willetts MP, Minister of State for Universities and Science, came to speak to the British Science Festival. His main job was to speak at the dinner, but he also gave the press 30 minutes. Unfortunately I wasn’t there. But I heard what happened.

Apparently the minister was saying some things about how important it was to base policy and decisions on scientific evidence. So someone asked him why the NHS funds homeopathy when there’s little evidence supporting it. His response was that patients want homeopathy so the government pays for it. To which a journalist asked why people with cancer weren’t allowed expensive drugs, with evidence in favour of them, when they wanted them but NICE hadn’t approved them. The minister responded that NICE had an advisory role only and that GPs should be free to make decisions in the best interests of their patients.

This is how it was reported to me by some people who were there.

As it stands, NICE does not just have ‘an advisory role’. It does offer advice in some areas, but it also has a regulatory role. In particular, if NICE approves a drug for use then NHS organisations are obliged to pay for the drug should a patient and their doctor request it. If NICE hasn’t approved a drug, PCTs are left to make their own decisions: "The NHS is legally obliged to fund and resource medicines and treatments recommended by NICE's technology appraisals."

To say that NICE has only an advisory role is either a) wrong, or b) an indication of a change in policy. Given that Mr Willetts is a government minister, either possibility seems likely.

Apparently there was general hubbub after this incident. The science journalists thought it might be important, but they didn’t really know. Mr Willetts’ press officer came around to speak to each journalist in person to check whether they were going to write the story and pleading with them not to as the minister was speaking off his brief.

Most people didn’t write the story.

When I heard about this later, I was a bit aghast. I thought that either Mr Willetts being wrong about an important piece of government policy, or announcing a change in policy (perhaps prematurely) were both good stories. I couldn’t believe that they had let him off.

In the pub that evening, the man from the Irish Times suggested a number of things that might have happened. If the science journos just missed the real point, they might not have conveyed it properly to their news desks and so might have been told just to leave it. Or, because it was so late in the day (1630) the journos might just have felt a bit lazy, knowing that if they played up the story they would have been asked to follow it up with David Willets’ department as well as the Department of Health. All of which might have been a bit of a pain to do so near to home time.

And this is how news is made.

I wasn't going to tell you this.  It feels like a bit of gossip too far.  But it turns out that the only paper that did run the story was The Times.  Although, they too got it a bit wrong:

Full public responsibility

This little short was in yesterday's paper:

It is neither a particularly good representation of what the scientist said or what I wrote.  I think that what I wrote was a fairly accurate description of what Dr Rheumatoid Arthritis told us.  This piece is definitely not.  In particular, the headline has very little to do with what Dr RA said at all. 

I don't know at what point in the journey between my laptop and the printed paper these changes crept in, but I find the whole thing a little disconcerting.  In my normal life, having your name on something means that you take full public responsibility for it.  In this weird new life that I am experiencing, unidentified people can change anything you write and leave your name intact at the top.  Does that mean I still have to take full public responsibility for it?  If not, why bother putting my name on it? 

This makes me particularly uncomfortable because my normal life is hurtling towards me very quickly right now.  On Monday morning I am going to be Jean Adams from Newcastle University again, not Jean Adams from The Times.  What if someone asks me about that piece I wrote on rheumatoid arthritis?

The NIB*

Maybe you will have guessed from my tone that Tuesday was a slow news day at the British Science Festival. But we dutifully wrote and filed our copy. Two full pieces – one from science editor, one from science correspondent and media fellow combined. As we weren’t in the office on Wednesday morning with a big stack of papers to browse through, there was no opportunity to determine how successful we’d been.

“Have you seen the paper this morning?” asked science correspondent.

“There were a few things on the web” responded media fellow, optimistically.

“That doesn’t mean anything” said science editor, “I think your piece on alcohol got in as a NIB.”

“A NIB!” exclaim science correspondent and media fellow in unison, “we came all this way for a NIB?”

“Well, did you think there was anything worth more than a NIB yesterday?” asked science editor with sagacity and wisdom, “it’s not like there were any stories or anything.”

At least our piece got in as a NIB. Science editor’s piece didn’t even make it to the paper.

*News in brief. A hacking job done by someone who doesn’t get to work before noon that involves removing the majority of your words as well as your byline.

The big boys

In our press centre there’s a hard core of science journos from the dailies – The Times, Guardian, Inde, Telegraph, FT, Mail, Mirror and Irish Times. There’s also a man from the Press Association who is one of the gang and some other hangers on who, quite clearly, are not.

The people from The Times and the FT have media fellows who have taken on the persona. The man from The Guardian also has one, but she doesn’t seem to be quite so involved. We get to sit in there right amongst the big boys. Sometimes we even join in a bit of the jokes and banter. But basically it’s obvious that we’re the new girl/boy. Our one redeeming feature is that we both have medical degrees and so can reliably be called on to answer those “what’s the difference between a tendon and ligament?” questions (tendons join muscle to bone; ligaments join bone to bone).

So yesterday when Nature decided to call a press conference on C .difficile at 1230 when everybody already had enough material for three stories, guess what happened? FT man asked his media fellow to go just in case there was a good story there. Times woman looked at me hopefully. I knew what to do.

Oh the poor researchers. A paper in Nature is something you should be congratulated on, not have to defend to would-be journalists. Three media fellows amounted to 50% of the audience. All three of them doctors. All three of them working in public health. Two of them with a special interest in infectious diseases (yes, obviously me who doesn’t do infectious diseases). The other two quite skilfully identified that the research was of almost no relevance to the NHS, the Health Protection Agency, or patients.

We had are very own little huddle at the end. There was no story.

Press conferences

This is what happens. A bunch of journos sit in a big room with their laptops, their mobile phones and the all important data cables. Then a press officer shepherds them all into a lecture theatre where a scientist speaks to them for 5 minutes about their research, followed by 25 minutes for questions. Sometimes there is no real story, other times there is a great story but it doesn’t become clear until the last 5 minutes when the scientist lets slip about a teeny little thing they did last year but is actually a lot more interesting than any of the other things they have mentioned so far. Then the journos huddle up and swap notes on what was and wasn’t said and what the story might be. They grab coffee and return to the big room with the laptops. Then a press officer shepherds them all into a lecture theatre....


I took this photo through the blinds because I was too embarrassed to ask all those people for permission to take their photo.  I hope it give an impression, if not detail.

This happens five or six times a day. Well, actually only five or six times a morning. Because you can only catch a journo’s attention before about 2pm. After that they’re writing on a deadline and they are grumpy. Before that they are full of banter and gags and competitions re how many copies everybody’s latest book has sold and how many times they have each been slagged off by Ben Goldacre.

Then everybody files by about 6pm and they slouch off to the pub.

Really they’re a great bunch. Lively, curious, funny. Better at critical appraisal than most undergraduates and able to do it in a flash without ever having to actually read the research paper in question.

Through the afternoon the room is quiet, punctuated only by the guy from the Mirror asking if anyone can think of a single syllable word for protein.

Yesterday one of the press conferences was on something to do with turbulence. This is as much as I can tell you because, despite 30 minutes of intensive questions, I never got any further than it was something to do with turbulence. Eventually the lady from the Daily Mail asked if it would be possible for Dr Turbulence to just explain the key finding of his work. By the time he got to the stage of saying “Look at this jug of water, it wouldn’t be particularly interesting to observe for a prolonged period of time...” the soft giggles of the man from the Financial Times had deteriorated into loud guffaws. The room erupted. The journos stopped trying. There was no story.

Birmingham

Well it sure is nice to be back in student accommodation.

Actually it’s not that bad. Positively luxurious compared to the accommodation that I lived in when I was a real student. For instance, there is a shower and toilet in the room (obviously not just in the middle of the room...) and the toilet paper has an absorbency rating higher than tin foil.

Yesterday afternoon we had a little induction to the British Science Festival Press Centre from the people at the British Science Association. It is clearly fairly well kitted out with equipment, but not so well with windows. Right now it is all very unglamorous.

I haven’t been told very much about what I’m supposed to be doing over the next few days. But I’m getting the feeling that it involves going to press conferences 0845-1300, then writing something from them. I’m not sure how much writing or how many of them will be written on. In fact about all I have been told is “it’s very busy, you need to get there early”. I'm thinking that the fact that the science editor and science correspondent and me are all going says something about the level of coverage that might be expected. But it might not.

We were also given our press passes which, slightly disappointingly, don’t actually say PRESS on them. I’d really been looking forward to having a card I could stick in my hat band. I have no idea why it says ‘speaker’ on it. Whatever else I am doing, I am definitely not speaking at this conference.