Byline Employee of the Month Certificate Made Easy

Byline employee of the month certificate

so in 2015 I started the young American journalist grant I remember my plane landing in life sees an East German city not far from Berlin and I was ecstatic I was fresh out of grad school and I was here to talk with farmers about how they use antibiotics or how they feel about regulations regarding antibiotic I know antibiotics in agriculture and I was especially curious whether US farmers would face similar challenges when a similar policy went into effect and I won't bore you with all the details or why you've done with it but more or less it would require veterinary oversight so you couldn't just give it to your animals when you want it to it was also around this time that big newsrooms like the New York Times in The Guardian they were publishing their own texts about an apocalyptic post-antibiotic era a time when superbugs would run rampant and common infections would no longer be curable due to antibiotic resistance and you can think of antibiotic resistance as a type of natural stalemate that occurs as an as pathogens are exposed to antibiotics over time but for me it was always a little bit too abstract too distant we had germs these microscopic cellular organisms things you can't see with the human eye affecting thousands of people and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars headlines were sensationalistic if not dramatic antibiotic freeze nightmare bacteria superbugs every now and then I'd find a paragraph about a pharmaceutical companies reluctance to pour millions of dollars into antibiotic research simply because the drugs are you so sparingly they don't turn a profit so zero return means zero incentive or I'd hear a little bit about the importance of making sure physicians prescribed antibiotics in a proper fashion to make sure to make sure they retain their efficacy but what was missing were pieces of the puzzle explaining what was happening on the ground how were these policies being implemented and how were the individuals implementing them being affected this is what drew me to Germany they had recently made such policy changes and the EU has a very impressive huge database with impressive data sets looking at not only antibiotic resistance trends but antibiotic usage and I found myself looking for sources as I went about my reporting process who was I going to talk to and I started with the pig and dairy farmers I started with farming associations the head of the FDA in Brussels the head the president of the FAO retired employees of the FDA university researchers and experts who presented at conferences like the World Health Summit or the joint programming initiative on antimicrobial resistance in Stockholm and I'd like to say that access was easy but it wasn't sometimes a source would take a month and my farmers took five before they were even willing to talk with me and I think this is due in part to a broad definition of media which makes it very difficult for news consumers to distinguish between journalism and entertainment fact and fiction credible and non credible the intersections are many they're complex and they're increasingly blurred this fuels have persistent hesitancy people have when engaging with the media will we be fair will we use misuse your trust are we going to be honest about our intentions and I think this stems from a misunderstanding of how to engage with one another fundamentally science and journalism actually have quite a lot in common it starts with a question I hypothesis that evolves as more information comes to light and if you think about the similarities you also want to make sure that you can interact with one another that you feel confident in that situation in the process of reporting my stories I had to rely on what I learned from my sources and each story was different but what I learned fundamentally was that people were very surprised to learn that journalism is not simply the presentation or regurgitation of facts but is instead a process that requires looking at information skeptically and critically with the help of experts which also includes acknowledging your own biases great journalism occurs when it informs and contextualizes while emotionally engaging your audience it's not as easy as it sounds if it were researchers would be making their journal articles a lot more fun to read most journalists strive for this ideal so contextually and emotionally engage but there are some that report for their byline for that ego but this is the exception not the rule most journalists do this work because they care you don't have to look far for great journalism there's Carl Zimmer of stat Marin McKenna of National Geographic and coral Davenport of the New York Times and their work if anything has proven that there's an appetite for science journalism journalists need individuals willing to share their observations professionals who have spent their careers studying and focusing on important issues like artificial intelligence antimicrobial resistance or mRNA vaccines and this is true not just across Sciences but across all fields my father always said to me people have stories to tell you just have to listen and it was exactly these stories that I heard from my sources and through my own experiences that helped me note a big difference in the way that the u.s. presents antibiotic use data and the way that the European Union and Germany does the European Union already provides a country-by-country breakdown that is further broken down across region and state in Germany the you has yet to break it down across state-by-state it's roughly a ten-year difference if you look at when the program started and without this data no meaningful trends can be found you can't make a generalization there's just not enough information and I found myself wondering why this was the case and I was a little bit disheartened to find that there wasn't enough data to make an assumption or an assessment to me this is fascinating stuff this is the intersection of Health and Environment and animals and who else but a journalist has the resources and the time to look at these issues in closer detail journalists believe it or not are necessary we serve as an outset set of eyes to look at these issues and it's our job to be transparent and I don't mean to say that journalists don't bring their own opinions or object our assumptions to the table but through our evidence through our sourcing and through the production process there's an element of transparency I myself grew enthusiastic about the way Germany managed antibiotic use but I was also disheartened because the researchers on the ground who were working so hard to make this data available for us very rarely had recognition or knew what or really did it come to light what they were actually doing and this is a piece that's very important and missing in the focus of making their own advancements researchers forget to tell their own stories stories it's very much need to be told especially outside of their own research or research communities and the scientific field so how can I as a journalist help researchers share their stories and how can researchers help us maybe you're a farmer a researcher or a politician and one day you might find yourself face to face with a journalist and instead of feeling hesitate or disinterested I'd hope you'd feel eager willing to engage with them and tell them a little bit about what you know remembering that your experiences are part of a large complex puzzle that's why I have a couple of tips for interacting with journalists that I'd like to give you today the first is to use analogies and metaphors finding a way to explain complex topics in a simple way is very effective yes you have a professional role but you might also be a nice or an uncle how would you explain a topic to your cousin or your your daughter you wouldn't just say DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid you'd say DNA is a blueprint for creating cells or an instruction manual and be careful with the analogies and metaphors you use because sometimes they can distort you need to really see what the professional level of the journalist is when you interact the next is to kill jargon not everyone knows what you know you've studied so instead of saying something like this is incredibly so linic just say it's salty or high in salt this is so much more effective the next thing is to keep an open mind yes you want things presented in a particular way but we're trying to make it accessible for as many people as possible some of whom don't have scientific literacy work with the journalists to find a middle ground next is to provide access whether that's access to you as a professional or access to a study it does wonders I would often draft 10 to 15 questions went before I reached out to a primary investigator and only having looked at the abstract of their study but once I had the study I could look at the methods I could look at who funded it I could look at a number of different things that dropped the number of questions I had down to five or six essentially saving then time and me time as well the next is to say feel free to say off the record if you don't want information attributed to you maybe it's important contextually but you don't really want it mentioned in the story every one of my farmers wanted to be anonymous they did not want to say what they really felt about the policies but these on background conversations were very helpful for me as I move through it in my reporting you should absolutely feel comfortable to do that remember that a journalist is not here for PR it is not our job to make you look good or your institution we're going to talk with your colleagues and talk with your critics and try to figure out whether what you said can be verified just like in an experiment is it replicable is it verifiable titrations are really boring but it's an idea and lastly keep an open mind oh let go yeah sorry you won't be able to control everything that happens in the text and I never send a full copy to my sources before it's done I don't know any journalist who does but you should go back if a journalist does not reach out to you and asks to see your quotes have them read back to you and make sure that the dates and numbers and all of that has been accuracy checked this is beneficial to you and also to the journalists in my experience when science and journalism come together it's a magical relationship they mutually benefit one another and it's a great way to facilitate between researchers and the general public I think that there are so many topics like genetically modified organisms or cancer therapies or antidepressants these are topics which make headlines and they're no longer limited to science sections but find themselves on as the centerfold of Business and Economics papers this is true today and will be true in the future and it's my job as a journalist to to facilitate but also garner curiosity for the work that's being done I want to make the science and technology accessible for anyone who finds themself interested in it and it's my hope that by providing a small little glimpse into the world of journalism maybe if you do find a journalist at your door you will feel empowered and capable of taking on the challenge of communicating with them rather than keeping your own story behind closed doors thank you