Just as the quark is the basic unit of particle physics, the news release is the basic unit of your research communications. And just as different flavors of quarks combine to form atoms, different types of news releases combine to form your high-energy “atomic” research strategy.
Understanding the many news release content types is important because they can have very different uses and can target different audiences.
The hard news release
This is invariably justified by a “news peg,” that provides a reason to issue a news release. The news peg usually consists of publication of a scientific paper or a talk on your research findings. Other news pegs include submission of a formal report to your funding agency on a study or a discovery.
The hard news release offers the most immediate payoff in terms of media coverage and public attention. Your institution or funding agency will issue most hard news releases with an embargo dictated by the journal or the meeting organizers.
You risk your credibility if you do publication by news release; that is, issuing a news release and/or holding a news conference on findings not based on a legitimate publication or professional talk.
One of the most notorious cases of such an unwarranted hard news release was the 1989 announcement of the achievement of “cold fusion” by chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. The University of Utah issued a news release and held a news conference before the scientists had even published a scientific paper on the results. The university and the researchers were heavily criticized for the rush to publicity, not to mention that their work was generally discredited.
The feature release
This typically describes work in progress that has not yet yielded publishable conclusions.
A feature release may be sent to the media and/or published by in-house newsletters and websites. It often includes anecdotes, first-person descriptions, conceptual background, and potential applications. It also leads off with a compelling beginning such as a human-interest angle aimed at attracting readers.
Feature releases can call attention to work that is inherently interesting but that has not yet yielded a result. They also provide background information on your work that you can send to key audiences. So, when you believe your work is far enough along to justify a story, encourage your institution to do a feature on your work. Be ready to provide the writer with the kinds of anecdotes and perspective on your work that make for an interesting feature.
The backgrounder
This is much like a feature release, but it is usually a more nuts-and-bolts description of the history and evolution of a piece of research. A backgrounder usually accompanies a hard news release as part of a media kit, discussed in chapter 10 on crafting releases, and can also be posted on your website. The backgrounder aims to give media and other audiences more detail on the work than should be included in the hard news release.
The personal profile
This is a feature article that concentrates on you as a person. It usually describes your personality and background, how you became a researcher, and your challenges and adventures as a scientist. The profile may also include your role in controversies, as well as comments from fellow researchers and others who know you.
Many researchers are uncomfortable with profile articles. After all, the scientific culture portrays research as an impersonal search for truth. You may not feel it is pertinent that you flunked freshman calculus or that your favorite hobby is building ships in bottles. Or, you may be embarrassed by such revelations that, while you are a brilliant theoretician, you are a klutz at the lab bench and your techs have pleaded that you stay clear of expensive instruments.
However, the many uses of personal profiles should persuade you they are worth some minor discomfort. They portray you as an interesting person to many important audiences, like donors, prospective students, and lecture audiences, who want to know more about you. Such personalizing makes you a more accessible, even authoritative figure. Profiles also help students understand that researchers are people just like them, giving them confidence that they, too, could become a scientist or engineer.
The Q&A
This type of news article offers your opinions and explanations in your own words. The Q&A portrays you as an authoritative expert and/or institutional leader with something important to say. Typically, it is written for internal consumption, but media do sometimes use the Q&A format to bring a more personal feel to a topic. When your own public information officer (PIO) does a Q&A, you have considerable control over its content. You can suggest questions and review your edited answers to make sure they say exactly what you want to say. However, if the Q&A is done by an outside journalist, as with other news articles, you can offer to review the Q&A, but do not expect the journalist to comply.
The news tip
This consists of a brief “nugget” that may either describe your research finding or highlight your expertise on a topic in the news. The news tip aims to interest journalists in doing a story or quoting you in their stories on the topic. Some organizations send out periodic collections of feature news tips to media. Often, such tips are backed up by feature articles that offer more in-depth information. Also, some journals, such as Science and Nature, prepare brief summaries of newsworthy papers in each issue that they send as a press packet to media.
The media alert
This release notifies journalists of a news conference or other event. It includes all the pertinent information about the event—place, time, participants, and so on. However, the alert limits information about a news conference on an embargoed scientific paper. Otherwise, journalists would have enough information to do a story, breaking the embargo.
The grant/gift announcement
This describes a new gift or grant, explaining the objectives of the research.
Researchers and administrators quite often overestimate media interest in new gifts or grants—mainly because they are so delighted to receive the funding. However, “money does not talk” to most audiences. Even very large dollar amounts do not particularly interest readers and will likely warrant no more than a few lines in the local media. Chapter 10 on writing news releases includes how to write a grant announcement that is more likely to interest readers.
Fundraisers may push for a gift announcement to curry favor with the donor or foundation giving the gift. However, sucking up to donors is not a compelling reason to do a news release on a gift. Instead, such an announcement can be posted on an internal website and/or published in the in-house newspaper. Nor are news releases appropriate for promoting some fund-raising priority, such as attracting donations for a new laboratory. Rather than issuing such promotional releases, development officers should use the legitimate news about research achievements to illustrate the quality of the institution’s work, which will be enhanced by that new lab.
The award announcement
This announcement of a prize or honor is another type of release that is seldom of interest to the external media, but which researchers and administrators love to see publicized. Such releases also aim at massaging the recipient’s ego. Resist the temptation to ask your PIO to do a multitude of award releases. For all but the most important awards, more appropriate are notices in internal publication and on the institutional and departmental websites. The same brief notices can be emailed to the researchers’ neighborhood weekly newspaper and/or website, which are more likely to feature the award.
News releases have a much broader utility than their traditional aim of attracting media coverage. In fact, these other purposes may outweigh even the prime objective of prompting news stories and can justify doing a news release even if the finding will not interest media. Beyond attracting coverage, news releases can serve as ammunition for your funding agency, background material a statement of record, a web alert for fellow researchers, a record of stewardship of public funds, and many other purposes.
Ammunition for your funding agency
NSF, NIH, and other agencies readily use outside news releases in their print and online publications. The NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences searches EurekAlert! for news releases on NIGMS-funded research and puts them to multiple uses. They post releases on the NIGMS website as Research Briefs and use them in their e-newsletter Biomedical Beat. Also, NIH may use releases as the basis for stories in its Research Matters online magazine and in radio and video podcasts (vodcasts). See the online resources for this chapter at ExplainingResearch.com for links to these outlets.
Internal communication
Releases can give your own administrators lay-friendly updates that help them understand your work. Administrators also may use releases as fodder for their own communications to their constituencies. At universities, writers for the president often draw on releases for their presidential communications. These include the president’s report to trustees, the institution’s annual report, and letters to legislators urging support for research funding.
Development officers also use news releases to court donors and potential corporate partners. In one case, Duke, fundraisers drew on news releases when courting to give further donations a businessman who had donated to a building in his name. As part of their cultivation, they sent him an annual report of the significant research advances in “his” building—created by drawing on the substantive collection of news releases done on that research.
An investment
Releases can serve as a communications “investment” in a promising researcher. They provide useful background information, even though the papers they cover may have been rather technical and less than “newsworthy” to lay media.
Retired Ohio State PIO Earle Holland recalls the impact of investing in coverage of the work of glaciologist Lonnie Thompson when the young scientist first arrived at the university. “I did the first story on him that had ever been done, and have done twenty-seven stories on him since then,” recalls Holland. “During that period, he rose from being a rather ostracized researcher for his views on global warming to being a National Academy of Sciences member, and he has gotten just about every award in geological sciences you can get, including the National Medal of Science. He was Al Gore’s chief adviser on An Inconvenient Truth.”
“It was a true partnership because as I was educated in his science, he became educated in communications,” says Holland. “Also, when Discover, Rolling Stone, or Time highlighted him, they had a wealth of news releases to draw on as background on his findings.” What’s more, says Holland, such extensive external coverage of his work reflected back on Thompson’s status and visibility within the university. His visibility made him an attractive candidate for honors and made it easier for him to advocate for funding and other resources.
Background material
Releases serve as useful background material for subsequent stories. As NIGMS PIO Alisa Machalek says, “If I am writing a story about RNA interference, I will look up the releases we’ve done to see what we said. Or, if a journalist writing about RNAi calls and says ‘I need some background fast; I have a story due in two hours,’ the background is all written up already. It has already been cleared and is posted on our site.”
A statement of record
A news release is also a public statement of record on a piece of research. Unlike a scientific paper, a news release constitutes an accessible lay-level account of your work. It can include your assessment of the implications of your work and your future plans. It also constitutes a public acknowledgment of credit to colleagues, which could protect you against charges that you are trying to hog the glory. In contrast, media stories never list all the research collaborators and may misrepresent their roles.
The news release is also a historical document. Over the decades, I have been privileged to write releases on some of the major developments in science, from the synthesis of the first gene at MIT in 1970 to the announcement of the first neural control of a robotic arm in 2003. In both those cases, and in many others, it was particularly important to provide an accurate, detailed lay-level explanation of the research, since that information would become part of the historical record.
A web alert for fellow researchers
A news release is also searchable information about your paper or talk. Scientific papers or meeting abstracts may not be picked up by search engines, but news releases are. In fact, news releases often appear in search engines right along with media stories on a research paper or presentation. So, news releases posted online make it more likely that such audiences as prospective patients, prospective corporate partners, other researchers, and potential donors will find out about your work.
A record of stewardship of public funds
If you receive public funding, you have ethical and even legal obligations to account for your use of that support and to disseminate your research findings to the widest audience. News releases are the most important way to meet those obligations.
Education for the public
The occasion of a research discovery constitutes a “teachable moment,” offering a prime chance to educate the public about science, engineering, and medicine. You have the public’s attention because you have discovered something new. And the news release—along with images, video, animations, and other materials—offers the public an accessible way to learn about your finding and the science behind it. As discussed in the introduction, the NSF recognizes the educational value of such dissemination in its Broader Impacts criterion for reviewing proposals, the National Science Foundation (NSF) pointedly asks reviewers to consider “What is the potential for the proposed activity to. . . benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes?”
As discussed earlier, the NSF explicitly instructs that the Broader Impacts section of a proposal can include “improved science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and “increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology.” The NIH includes similar language in its grant contracts requiring recipients to make efforts to inform the public of their work.
Family news
As mentioned previously, news releases can contribute to family harmony by helping show why researchers may spend so much time closeted in their laboratories. Research communicator David Salisbury recalls even aiding spousal communication with a release. “I did a release on this senior scientist in his 60s, who was studying lightning,” recalls Salisbury. “When I saw him some time after the release, he said ‘I showed the story to my wife, and she said it is the first time she understood what I did.’”
Chapter 10. Craft Releases That Tell Your Research Story
An effective news release adheres to editorial rules that writers have found effective over long experience. If your releases observe these rules, the media and other audiences will perceive your work as more credible and significant. Here are those rules of an effective news release:
Start early!
Notify your press office as early as possible of a newsworthy scientific paper or conference talk—as soon as a paper is accepted or a conference talk scheduled. It may take weeks to develop a news release and associated visuals and other materials. Or, if you find yourself doing your own release, start as early as possible. Importantly, the communication staff at your journal need time to plan a proper communication effort, says Tiffany Lohwater, AAAS Chief Communications Officer and Director of the Office of Public Programs. “The earlier the better. Don’t wait weeks after your paper has been accepted. At AAAS, for example, we are equipped to help with communication, and oftentimes already have relationships established with reporters who cover the topic.”
For journalists’ purposes, a news release should be issued long before the journal publication date or conference talk. Most journals will be willing for such releases to be issued with embargoes to the publication date. For a detailed guide, see the chapter on working with public information officers.
The header of a news release contains the housekeeping information necessary for a journalist to write a story:
The headline is your first chance to lure audiences to read your news release, so the headline needs to be a clear, specific statement of the discovery that engages audiences. Preferably it uses an active verb. Vague, general headlines are less effective. Which of these headlines do you think would be more likely to interest journalists and readers:
Duke Medical Center Researchers Develop Experimental Brain-Machine Interface
or
Monkeys Consciously Control a Robot Arm Using Only Brain Signals
The second is more compelling because it states more concretely and intriguingly what the achievement was.
However, many news releases do not have the natural draw of monkeys and robot arms, perhaps covering more technical advances. In such a case, an effective headline might instead highlight the overall significance of the work. So, rather than the technical
Discovery Reveals Mechanism of Dendritic Spine Function
a better headline for the release would be
The Calculating Brain: New Study Suggests That Neurons Are Built to Perform Simple Arithmetic
A headline that uses a metaphor or vivid phrase can attract readers to even the most basic research discovery. Here are such headlines about some very basic discoveries at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital:
Engineered 'starter key' for brain tumor offers new model for drug testing
‘Lone Wolf’ Protein Offers New Pathway to Cancer Treatments
Researchers discover how enzyme 'shape-shifts' in drug-resistant leukemia
Discovery points to drugs that would 'short-circuit' deadly leukemia
Target for Potent First-Strike Influenza Drugs Identified
Good headlines put key phrases up front, to attract readers. The following examples fail to put the key phrase first:
Duke Medical Center Researchers Develop Experimental Brain-Machine Interface
Discovery Reveals Basis of Dendritic Branching in Neurons
The first headline starts with the self-serving phrase “Duke Medical Center Researchers
Develop . . .” and the second is too technical and uses the flat phrase “Discovery
Reveals Basis of . . .” As mentioned previously, better versions would be
Monkeys Consciously Control a Robot Arm Using Only Brain Signals
or
How the Neuron Sprouts Its Branches
Writers are often tempted to put the institution’s name first in headlines, mistakenly believing that it enhances the institution’s name recognition. However, that benefit loses “punch” in the headline. Emphasizing the institution also tends to give the release the air of a publicity piece, rather than the news story it should be perceived as.
Eliminating unnecessary words improves headlines. So, even the good headline
The Calculating Brain: New Study Suggests That Neurons Are Built to Perform Simple Arithmetic
Could be improved by tightening it to
The Calculating Brain: Study Suggests Neurons Perform Simple Arithmetic
Sometimes, however, brevity is not the best strategy for headlines. The science behind some releases may require a longer headline. The headline
Monkeys Consciously Control a Robot Arm Using Only Brain Signals
was not the one that actually appeared on the news release. The actual headline was
Monkeys Consciously Control a Robot Arm Using Only Brain Signals; Appear to “Assimilate” Arm As If It Were Their Own
The longer headline was necessary because the neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis believed the headline should emphasize that the monkeys appeared to rewire their neural circuitry to control the robot arm as if it were a third natural arm. Although the fact that the monkeys assimilate the robot arm might seem to be only a technical detail, it has turned out to be fundamental to understanding of how the brain learns, as well as how easily humans might adapt to external “neurorobots.”
The headlines above are also strong because they tell the reader what the story is about. Unfortunately, all too many headlines do not. Rather, they seek to be clever at the expense of being informative, like the headline
Monkey See Robot, Monkey Do Robot
Such cute-but-uninformative headlines are not effective. Their aim is admirable: to attract readers using clever verbiage. However, they fail to serve the primary purpose of a headline: to inform. They thus reduce the release’s credibility and try the patience of readers who want to know immediately what the story is about.
It is possible, however, to have fun with headlines and still be informative. So when a clever and informative headline comes to mind, by all means use it. For a release on a new genetic technique dubbed “P[acman],” I wrote the headline
P[acman] Permits Precise Placement of Prodigious DNA
For a release about a discovery that infants are mathematically adept, I wrote the pithy
Baby Got Math
And for a release about a fungus that launches its spores at stunning velocities,
Corn Fungus Is Nature’s Master Blaster
Avoid using a headline that suggests an immediate clinical application for a basic finding. Such headlines overpromise. There was the vast overreach in the headline
UCLA biologists ‘transfer’ a memory: Research in marine snails could lead to restoring memories and altering traumatic ones
In his book Science, Money, and Politics, Daniel Greenberg dubs such overpromising “may journalism.” Greenberg asserts that “even with the de rigueur cautionary qualifiers, the excited formulaic reports of wondrous medical breakthroughs sometimes run so far beyond clinical reality that confessional correctives become necessary.”
For grant announcement releases, writers are frequently tempted to highlight the dollar amount in the headline and “lede” (see next section for a definition of this term). However, people are not interested in dollar amounts. To make a grant announcement more interesting, the writer can highlight the research to be carried out with the funding. So rather than the headline
Acme University Researchers Receive a Gazillion Dollars to Study Soap Scum
a better headline would be
Soap Scum Study Aims to Rid World of Slimy Scourge
The release would concentrate on the remarkable new soap scum analytical techniques researchers will use and the ultimate objective of the work. Only in the third or so paragraph would the release reveal that the study is funded by a new gazillion-dollar grant from the National Institute of Schmutz.
The “lede” of a news release comprises the first sentences that tell the reader what the release is about. (Historical note: the spelling of lede was allegedly meant to distinguish it from the spelling lead and harkens back to the era when newspapers were set with hot lead type. The space between lines of type was called leading, and journalists used lede so as not to confuse the typesetter.)
A good lede is succinct and informative, usually of the general form “Researchers have discovered X about Y. The significance of the finding is Z.” Academics have trouble crafting good ledes because they tend to “back into” the story. Their training in writing scientific papers compels them to start with background on a subject. So, an academic’s lede might start out. “The study of Y has a long history, beginning with the Middle Ages . . .”
Effective ledes are not “cute”—seeking to engage readers without stating immediately what the news is. While a concise lede might read
A new genetically engineered mouse shows many of the same symptoms of schizophrenia as humans with the disorder. Researchers who developed the mouse believe it offers a powerful new pathway to exploring the causes of a disease that ranks among the most prevalent causes of disability worldwide.
A misguided “clever” lede might be
The mouse cringes in the corner of its cage, refusing to nuzzle its cage mates as do its brethren. And it builds messy nests, unlike the tidy clumps of cotton that its fellow mice construct. Not just an antisocial outcast, this mouse has a genetic defect that makes it mimic schizophrenia.
Such a lede would be more appropriate in a feature release. It tells the reader to expect a general explanation of a piece of research and not a concise summary of a discovery. “Cute” ledes, or those that back into a story, frustrate readers and reduce a release’s credibility. In their daily lives, readers are bombarded with information, and they want a release to tell them efficiently what the story is about.
A lede that puts the institution’s name up front is also a bad idea because it tends to lose readers. Basically, readers do not care who did the work, only what the news is. So, those ledes that first lure readers with the news serve the institution best. The lede’s greater readability means that the institution receives more attention than if its name was up front in the lede.
Readers also want to know immediately why they should care about a story—dubbed the “nut graf” by journalists. The term is a contraction of the expression “nutshell paragraph.”
In the general form of the lede above, the nut graf is the sentence “The significance of the finding is Z.” While the nut graf must be clear and lay-friendly, it should only make claims with which you are comfortable. You need not speculate that your results may cure cancer or reveal the meaning of life—unless, of course, you truly believe deep in your heart that they will. Also, you need not justify every research finding as having a practical application, if it does not. A release on a basic finding need only state in the nut graf that it helps answer a significant basic question. If you clearly and intriguingly explain that basic question, readers will be interested.
Besides wanting to know why they should care about a news story, readers want to know why now. Journalists base their decision about doing a news story on this “news peg”—the event that sparked the release—such as the publication of a peer-reviewed paper or delivery of a talk. So a good release emphasizes the news peg, including the name and date of the journal or scientific meeting and the names of the principal authors. The year should be included in the date, since the release may persist on the internet for many years, without an attached header that might give the date. There is no need to include the formal title of a paper in the news release.
Never be vague about a news peg. Never say a piece of work was published “recently.” “If a press release says work was done ‘recently,’ and then we find out that it was published three months ago, we will have wasted our time working on the story, and it will be of no use now,” asserts Julie Miller, who has edited BioScience and Science News. “However, if it explicitly said the work was done three months ago, we might hold it to use in a feature.”
While they are not peer-reviewed, posters offer news pegs that are just as legitimate as published papers and talks, so consider doing releases on your posters. Your work was included in a scientific meeting, even though there might not have been time for it in the formal presentations. Also, journalists can readily obtain feedback on a poster from others at a scientific meeting.
However, do not do a news release or publicize a paper that is only posted on a preprint server. While it might be tempting to gain attention for what you consider an important and newsworthy finding, the ensuing criticism or the discovery of significant errors will damage your reputation.
News releases are traditionally organized as an “inverted pyramid.” That is, they place the most important information first, details of the story farther down, and the least important information, such as background, last. This style originated in newspapers because it enables editors to cut a story from the bottom up without losing important information. Just as with writing ledes, researchers may find it difficult to switch their editorial gears to the inverted pyramid organization for releases. Their training in writing scientific papers makes them prefer presenting background first and working toward conclusions.
Researchers also have trouble concisely explaining their research in news releases.
They tend to want to include technical detail that will turn off lay readers, including journalists. As with your talks, your news releases should summarize accurately and succinctly, skipping over unnecessary technical detail in order to clearly explain the basic concepts of your work.
True, you might have spent your entire professional life tracing that biological pathway or creating that intricate theory of stress fractures in alloys. And you might feel that it somehow diminishes your work not to include the names of every enzyme in that pathway or to list the myriad factors contributing to stress fractures. However, the real failing would be to let unnecessary detail spoil the chance to engage a broader audience in the concepts you have worked so hard to develop. Those journalists in professional media who want the details will glean them from your paper, or by asking you pertinent questions in an interview.
News releases should include important caveats high up. These are typically cautions to prevent readers from incorrectly assessing your work. For biomedical research,
Far too many medical stories fail to emphasize such tentativeness, misleading readers and giving disease sufferers false hope.
Caveats are especially important because your news release will appear online alongside media stories in search engine listings. The media stories may well include those caveats—perhaps including critical comments from researchers not involved in the work—and the release will suffer by comparison. And, the more clearly you can explain those caveats, the more credible will be your news release. What’s more, revealing the limits of your experiments and the remaining unknowns engages readers, who love a good mystery. However, in observing the inverted pyramid organization, you can place less important caveats lower in the release.
Putting your work in perspective engages readers and lends credibility to the release.
Also, if your research has policy implications, be accurate and frank about those implications. Your credibility is at stake. New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin reflects the attitude of many national reporters when he says, “The closer a paper gets to being policy-relevant, the more apt it is to have been mis-portrayed by the journal in its summary or in the press release of the university. And when you really push in hard, two-thirds of them go away right away because it is not a story.”
Finally, you might offer a bit of relevant personal history about the research. It will interest readers, including journalists.
Of course, the release should properly credit a paper’s authors, but there are limits.
If a paper covered in a release has only a few authors, it is feasible to include their names high up in the text without interrupting the flow and losing readers.
However, a release on a paper with dozens of authors typically does not list all of them, since they are available in the paper itself. If politics dictates listing all the authors, however, put the list at the end. In some cases, a long list of authors can actually enhance a release’s credibility. The historic 2017 scientific paper announcing the discovery of gravitational waves had hundreds of authors—not unusual for large-scale physics experiments.
If there are co-lead authors who contributed equally to a piece of work, it is a good idea to indicate that in the release. Also, it may be important to make clear what components of the work were done by each author or laboratory.
Journalists will find this information useful in deciding whom to interview about aspects of the work. In any case, avoid making it seem that you led a piece of work when you did not. Such an unwarranted claim can lead to public embarrassment.
To be safe, circulate the draft release to all the authors to make sure they are satisfied with their listing, or understand why they are not listed by name if they are one of a large cadre of authors.
Always acknowledge funding sources, whether government or private. You may even contact your funding sources to find out how they would like to be listed. They may have specific preferences. While some NIH institutes prefer that they be cited by name, others prefer an overall citation to NIH. Foundations may also have distinct preferences. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute prefers not to be listed as a funding source because it is actually the employer of record for HHMI investigators at their institutions.
Crediting your funding sources in the release helps the PIOs in the funding agency identify your release on such outlets as EurekAlert!, so it can use the release for its own purposes. What’s more, contacting your funding source may well lead to broader attention for your release. The NSF and NIH highlight on their websites and in publications news of research findings by scientists they support.
Make titles and affiliations unobtrusive
While you should list people’s titles and affiliations, try not to let this branding interfere with the flow of the release. See how this huge clot of titles interrupts the story:
"This was a really amazing discovery that will no doubt win us a big-money prize,” said Dr. Nelson Haff, who is the Richie Rich Professor of Astronomy and Theoretical Astrophysics and Director of the Center for Really Big Astronomical Phenomena in the Department of Starstuff Studies at the University of Southern North Nevada. “We will follow up this discovery once we have a bigger telescope with more flashing lights."
Neither readers nor journalists care about such titles. Rather, on first reference, identify people only briefly—such as “said astronomer Nelson Haff.” Relegate lengthy titles and affiliations to a later paragraph, or better still include them only in versions of the news release for internal publication. Also consider reserving the title Dr. only for MDs, and cite PhDs only by name, without the title.
Pithy, vivid quotes make a release more memorable and interesting. Also, quotes can credibly convey subjective information about a finding that may not be appropriate for the explanatory text. Such subjective statements as
The researchers were surprised at their discovery that the quasar was the brilliance of a million suns.
need to be attributed. One way is to simply add a “said” to back up the information:
The researchers said they were surprised at their discovery that the quasar was the brilliance of a million suns.
However, far better is to quote the researcher, to make the information more memorable and interesting:
“We were really stunned when our analysis showed that this little dot of light we thought was a star was an immense quasar that outshone a million suns,” said Haff.
A slightly dirty secret about quotes: writers of news releases and even media articles may massage quotes to make them clearer or more dramatic. So, when a quote in a draft release is not quite what you wanted to say, by all means ask for changes to improve it. PIOs sometimes even make up provisional quotes, which you can rewrite or delete as you wish.
Above all, remember that quotes need to sound like an utterance somebody really uttered, rather than a dry scientific statement. Researchers are often uncomfortable with colloquial quotes, preferring to “bland” them by removing personal or dramatic content or phrases during editing. And, they tend to clutter quotes with technical language or long sentences. Bland, cluttered quotes are less memorable and engaging, and they reduce readers’ interest in your research.
A good writer also knows not to “step on a quote,” prefacing it with information that reduces its impact. Do not write
The researchers said they were surprised at their findings. “We were really stunned when our analysis showed that this little dot of light we thought was a star was an immense quasar that outshone a million suns,” said Haff.
Rather, a good writer will set up a quote, writing
Haff recalled the moment at the end of a fruitless observing run when he and his colleagues first obtained their results. “We were really stunned when our analysis showed that this little dot of light we thought was a star was an immense quasar that outshone a million suns,” he said.
Writers may also use indirect quotes to convey subjective information, when there is no memorable quote:
With Gleevec, the thousands of people a year in the U.S. who contract chronic myeloid leukemia now have a much better prospect for long-term survival, said Druker.
However, it is a poor practice to lift quotes from scientific papers because people do not talk in scientese.
Finally, quotes should advance the story of the research, not the political agenda of an administrator—whether at the institution or a funding agency. So, there is usually no reason for a release to include a quote simply as hailing the work as significant from a vice president, program manager, or other administrator.
However, it is perfectly legitimate to quote an outside expert, even an administrator, who actually explains the significance of a piece of work, such as: “This discovery, we believe, is highly important because it establishes a new pathway for understanding the genetic malfunctions that lead to pancreatic cancer,” said John Doe, director of the Office of Cancer Genomics of the National Cancer Institute. “Few researchers expected that this particular gene played a role in this cancer, much less what appears to be a causative role.”
A kiss of death for the credibility of a research news release is the use of subjective hype words such as “breakthrough,” “pioneering,” “leading expert,” or “major discovery.” To convey a discovery’s importance, simply let the facts speak for themselves. If a piece of research is a true breakthrough, the release need only state that the finding represents the first time that such a discovery has been made.
More generally, attribute subjective statements and statistics to an authority—either a researcher or a source other than the release’s writer. Such attribution adds to the authority and credibility of the release, such as
About nine out of ten people who contract the disease would normally succumb to it within five years, according to Doe.
Some technical terms may be necessary to fully explain a piece of research, but use them judiciously. Include only those terms needed to understand your work, and ruthlessly weed out the rest. Does the reader really need to know the names of the many enzymes in a pathway or the names of all the components of the new superconducting alloy you have invented? True, journalists at scientific media will want to know those details. However, that purpose is served by a link to the paper or to a web page with the scientific description.
For lay-level releases, define technical terms on first use. Also, when you use the full name for an acronym, put the acronym in parentheses immediately after it—e.g. “prostate specific antigen” (PSA)—but only if you will use the acronym elsewhere in the release.
Sometimes, you will need to introduce a technical term just to give something a name, but fully explaining the term would add unnecessary detail. In such a case, enclose the term in quotes to tell readers they only need the name and not the full background, e.g. “a process known as ‘adiabatic cooling.’ ”
To reinforce an acronym or technical term in a reader’s mind, use it repeatedly throughout the release. Rather than referring vaguely to “the enzyme,” use the specific name. And consider spreading the introduction of technical terms in the text, so that readers are not bombarded with a confusing fusillade of them in one paragraph.
If you tell readers comparatively how big, small, hot, or cold something is, they will have a better concrete grasp of research concepts. Familiar comparisons also enhance the release’s interest. Science writers often compare microscopic objects with the width of a human hair—about 200 micrometers.
For a larger object, you might compare it to the period at the end of a sentence, the circumference of Earth, or the distance from New York to Los Angeles (or some other recognizable landmark). For tiny volumes, a good comparative is that a nanoliter is roughly the volume of a snippet of hair that is as long as the hair’s width. Also, convert metric measures to English. A good site for converting all sorts of measurements is the Megaconverter.
The vivid analogy or descriptive name compellingly describes research concepts for lay readers and can have surprising benefits for your research. Such an analogy or description can engage lay audiences, from legislators to venture capitalists to administrators, who would not otherwise resonate with prosaic explanations of your work. What’s more, such phrases may find their way into the scientific jargon. Thus, do not hesitate to invent such analogies or labels.
A few examples:
Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider’s explanation of the mechanism of global warming is an excellent example of a vivid analogy memorably explaining a complex concept. He portrays the stochastic nature of global warming by saying,
. . . climate is like a die: it has some hot faces, some wet faces, some dry faces, etc. I think our (in)action on global warming is loading the climatic die for more heat and intense drought and flood faces.
If the research involves any corporate partnerships, include an explicit statement about whether you or any other coauthors hold any financial interest in the company or have acted as a consultant or lecturer. Regardless of how minor such involvement has been, it is best to state it. Even a conflict-of-interest statement indicating no financial involvement shows that you have addressed the issue and lends credibility to the release.
Other chapters cover how to produce compelling, informative photos, animations, and video. Such visuals should be an integral component of your news releases. In many cases, visuals will determine whether your news release is picked up by the media and whether readers will be attracted to read it.
A news release should be a comprehensive explanation of a piece of research, rather than merely a short summary. Such depth is warranted because a news release serves a range of audiences, as discussed earlier. However, some PIOs mistakenly advocate short news-nugget releases that serve only as media alerts.
But even if the PIO narrowly—and mistakenly—focuses on media, a news release still needs to explain the advance in enough depth to enable science media, such as Scientific American and Science News, to decide whether a research advance is worth covering in depth. What’s more, since the news release is the public statement of record on a research advance, it should be comprehensive enough to effectively counter errors in media stories.
Duke research communicator Joanna Downer also points out that comprehensive news releases on clinical advances—especially including any caveats about a new treatment—serve an important medical purpose. “If you don’t include the full details, you are doing a huge disservice to potential patients and to the physician or researcher. Patients could be given false hope, and the physicians are going to be inundated with inappropriate contacts,” she says.
As with any content, releases posted on the web need to be web-friendly. Instead of putting lists in paragraph form, make them into bullets. Web releases need particularly tight, informative headlines, subheads, page titles, and key words. Similarly, the text that appears in the web page title bar should clearly explain the content. The page title is usually the release headline.
An excellent source of tips on web writing is the book Hot Text: web Writing That Works and the corresponding website, webWritingThatWorks.com.
Adapting your release for the web enhances readability, found by the eyetracking study by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice Coyne, referenced earlier. They found that reformatting content for the web—with bulleted items, subheads, and tighter writing—increased comprehension by 12 percent and increased reader satisfaction for online readers.
Ledes on web releases must be tight because search engines tend to chop them off. A lede that puts the name of the institution up front risks becoming uninformative when chopped by a search engine. Here is how the lede on such a release from Duke University was chopped on the Google News listing:
Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that activation of a particular brain region predicts whether people . . .
In contrast, a Reuters news article on the same topic, when chopped, still yielded basic information on the story:
Altruism, one of the most difficult human behaviors to define, can be detected in brain . . .
Instead of posting a complex release as a single web document, consider whether you can organize it into an efficiently written “backbone” containing the basic information, with the less important information—background, technical explanations, bios, links to scientific articles, etc.—relegated to secondary pages with links from the main page.
Your web releases also will be more engaging and credible if you provide such links to background information or definitions of key technical terms. These links can lead to content on your site, as well as be “outbound” links to authoritative outside sources. Do not worry that outbound links will take your audience away from your site. Users tend to return from such outside links to the originating site, web use studies have shown. Generally, internal links open in the same window, while outbound links open a new window. A collection of such outside references is included in the online resources for chapter 7 on developing your website.
Your web releases should also integrate high-quality news photos, animations, and audio; and give users the ability to download publication-quality images.
Finally, text news releases that are emailed should include a link to the web version, which can give readers a richer resource, complete with multimedia and links to background information.
A media kit is a collection of materials, which may be posted as a separate category on a website and/or produced on paper, that offers background on a research finding, project, or facility. It enables you to respond quickly and completely to the information needs of both media and your other audiences.
Among the possible components of a media kit:
Of course, you or your PIO may have already produced many of these materials, which can be readily incorporated into the media kit. As you produce them, keep in mind their possible application to a media kit. If your laboratory research description is highly technical, you may want to produce a lay-level version as well, for your website and for a web or paper media kit.