Stempra newsletter

Spring 2007

Interview with Fiona Fox

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Stempra media training day

Stempra newsletter

Media Training Day

In January Stempra piloted a training day for new press officers and those that want to build on existing skills. There was a varied program of speakers kicking off with a session on writing press releases. Judith Moore from UCL and Nick Stewart from Cancer Research UK gave their top tips for writing press release, including dissecting the most important components and how to ensure that journalists take a closer look. They also touched on how to avoid damaging relationships with journalists - the main tip being not to overload them with press releases that don’t have news value.

Next up were Dianne Stilwell from the Institute of Physics and Andy McLaughlin from the University of Bath on how to find good science stories. Their talks included how to encourage scientists to engage with the press office, the criteria for a good news story and how to get a news story that catches the eye of journalists. Fiona Fox from the Science Media Centre and Barbara Davies from RDS gave compelling reasons why press officers should always support scientists who want to speak on controversial issues. The both showed great case studies of how scientists engaging with the media on a big news story can benefit both the scientist, the institution and also the area of academic study.

After a glass of wine and some networking time, the second part of the event was given over to journalists to describe their day in the office and what they were looking for from science press officers. Robin McKie gave a plea to press officers not to forget Sunday newspapers in their press strategies, and described the best way to get a piece into the Observer. While Mike Hopkins from Nature talked about the role of trade press in getting news across to a wider audience.

This was the first Stempra training day of this type, so participants were encouraged to feed back on the day. Here is a small sample of the feedback we got back:

A very good day, very well organised, and really good to have the resources on line afterwards.

A great chance to share best practice and reflect on what we do, which there is always too little time for at work.

I thought the day was really informative and valuable and I think is was really well-organised. I think I found the information from the journalists probably the most valuable because it is often difficult to talk to journalists informally when they are tight to deadline.

For me, as someone who only occasionally does PR work and isn't trained in this area, the most useful session was the first, with the nitty gritty on writing a good press release.

Having access to this kind of event when I started taking on press office work would have made life much easier.

The speakers I particularly enjoyed were Andrew McLaughlin – warm and friendly presentation style, and Barbara Davies – interesting content, plus Fiona Fox – interesting and great communications skills.

I thought Robin Mckie was excellent. I learned so much from him, which I will pass onto my colleagues.

Stempra hopes to run a similar event in the near future and welcomes members' suggestions for what it might cover. If you have any ideas please contact the committee.

Presentations from the day can be found here

Claire Bithell
Science Media Centre
CBithell@ri.ac.uk

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