Invite the media in

Participants

Yarrow Axford
David Grant
Ben Hande
Kris Holstrom
Stephen Nodvin
Stuart Price

Objectives

• Help media find the stories in the science. Some of the news media professionals at the Yale Conference who had not previously attended a climate change event suggested that there may be opportunities to secure more media coverage for climate change-related events and conferences by simply inviting more media people (from all media and all levels, national to local) to such meetings and then helping them find story ideas once there. While this may seem like an overly obvious “fix” to the relative lack of coverage of climate change, it is useful if it puts additional onus on organizers of even specialist meetings to consider the newsworthiness of what they are orchestrating and to engage in more proactive advance work with the media. It is quite likely that many specialist meetings are routinely considered not appropriate for the news media and so the connection is never made. In some cases, this may be warranted given the preliminary status of findings to be presented. But even here, journalists can be provided guidance on what is appropriate for coverage and what isn’t, and be directed toward feature stories that humanize the researchers and their exploits across the globe, even if specific data sets or findings are not similarly ready for publication. For one thing, just having news media representatives present at a meeting may impose useful pressure on participants to speak clearly and accessibly so as not to be misunderstood or misquoted. This mutual proximity and training should help, over time, in bridging between the science and the news media.