Responsibilities of being a press officer

Stempra is working with its members to create a set of best practice guidelines for PR professionals working in science, technology, engineering and medicine.

In May 2008, at an event at the BA Science Communication Conference, members heard some examples of good and bad practice from Peter Cotgreate (The Royal Society), Jenny Gimpel (Media Manager, UCL), Fiona Macrae (Science reporter, Daily Mail) and Steve Palmer (Head of Press, Cancer Research UK).

Following this, attendees 'brainstormed' around the themes of 'press releases', 'promiting research stories' and 'press officer essentials' to come up with some suggestions of how to prepare for and deal with any eventuality in a science PR officer's day.

A small group of members is currently working on producing a comprehensive 'toolkit' for science PR officers that can be useful to anyone with any level of experience and forms the basis for a Stempra code of practice.

If you have any suggestions or comments, please contact Simon Levey on SimonL@stempra.org.uk.

Read Craig Brierley's news article on this topic >>

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