Education and training

Media studies are all the fashion in the UK at the moment. Within the media, science is trendy. This means that a lot of young people want to become science writers.

The following links will take you to people with their own take on entering the profession:

• The Newspaper Society
• The Periodical Publishers Association
• The National Council for the Training of Journalists

The profusion of media courses, even those in science communication, poses a challenge to potential students. One way to judge a course could be to see how much experience the teachers have of working in the media. Of course, media experience does not guarantee that you will benefit from first class teaching, just as a lack of experience does not mean crummy teaching. But in a profession that depends more on practice than theory, it is worth checking the track record of the faculty. It could help when deciding between different options.

As it says, the link above takes you to a directory of courses in the UK. They have been doing these things much longer in the USA. so here is a link to the Directory of Science Communication Courses & Programs in the United States.

If you want to stay in research and want to find out a bit about how the media operates, then the British Association for the Advancement of Science has a scheme just for you.

Media Fellowships create greater awareness and understanding of the workings of the media among practising engineers and scientists. Fellows spend between three and eight weeks with either a print or broadcast organisation, working alongside journalists to gain experience of the news selection process. Fellows learn to work within the conditions and constraints of the media to produce accurate and well informed stories about developments and technical breakthroughs, as well as becoming better equipped to communicate their expertise to the general public and their colleagues. The deadline for applications is usually in April.

Click here to view comments and reports from past media fellows. Further information here or contact: Alice Taylor-Gee, tel 020 7019 4940, e-mail alice.taylor-gee"at"the-ba.net

If you fancy a career in the business, there are several specialist course for science writing in the UK. The most suitable for would-be science writers are probably postgraduate courses aimed at people with a science degree. These courses can add media skills to students' scientific knowledge. Perhaps the best known is the MSc course at Imperial College.

From time to time the Wellcome Trust produces a directory of courses in science communication. The latest edition appeared in September 1997. To get a copy, send a message to comm+ed@wellcome.ac.uk or access the on-line version.

If you are keen to train in the USA, the place to start a search for a suitable course is the Directory of Science Communication Courses & Programs in the United States

Several universities in the UK run general postgraduate media courses. One of the best known is at City University.

For 'on-the-job' training, or for general journalism, consider the National Council for the Training of Journalists.

Science graduates should not feel put off from enrolling for general courses. Here is what Linda Christmas, who has run journalism courses, said in The Journalists' Handbook:

"One year I took [in] a PhD in astrophysics, which my colleagues here said wasn't wise - she had a PhD mind for a start, not a journalist's mind. As for astrophysics, they probably didn't know what it was. Well, she went straight onto The Times after the course and is now writing about science in a very accessible way. So, anyone with a science degree will be looked at carefully."

Correspondence schools in journalism are possibly fine for those who need a few very expensive tips on how to sell the odd piece of hobbyist writing on your specialist subject to The Bream Fisher's Monthly or Doll Collector's Gazette, but they are next to useless if you want to make journalism your living or any substantial part of your living.

I've rehearsed this monologue a few times here, but the truth is that in 20 years as a journalist I've never met anybody who works in papers or magazines who learned the trade through a correspondence course. In the main, journalism pays rather better than marking the copy of correspondence students and is rather more satisfying: it means the level of tuition is usually low. Very often - and I'm thinking here of one of the very biggest course operators - the course is run by people whose experience is in running correspondence courses rather than in journalism. And it shows. 

The last time I wrote about this - and, yes, that last time is getting further away every time I repeat this - I asked why all the courses point their students at the trade and hobby mags when there is so much work available on the daily papers. I got a letter from the head of one correspondence course pointing out that neither the Observer nor the Independent - the only two papers of which he'd enquired - ever take freelance copy. This is absolute rubbish.

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