Making the news

There was an interesting discussion on The Media Show (BBC Radio 4) about communicating university research this week. It was prompted by recent coverage of scientists from Newcastle University who created sperm from embryonic stem cells in a laboratory for the first time.

The panellists discussed the way in which this research was covered in the media, which took it from a discovery which could help infertile men father children into a sci-fi realm where men were superfluous.

It was an interesting discussion but what troubled me was the underlying implication that press officers were unscrupulous types out to get coverage at all costs.

 As a university press officer (and a former journalist) who has just this week worked on another big research story which got world-wide media interest, this is a topic close to home.

It can be very difficult to get coverage of research stories. Much of the work carried out in universities, while very worthwhile, is not likely to attract attention beyond the limited arena within which the researchers work. 

Not only that, but many academics are reluctant or even afraid to interact with the media for fear that what may be their life’s work would be “dumbed down” to make it accessible to the lay person.

So when we do get a good story and a willing spokesperson press officers inevitably see this as a golden opportunity to promote the university.

 However, while we may be employed by higher education institutions this does not mean our news sense has gone out the window or that we exist solely as propaganda mouthpieces for our university. It also does not mean that we “collaborate” (as I heard one of The Media Show’s contributors say) with journalists to sensationalise stories or mislead readers.

I would have loved to hear from the press office at Newcastle University or perhaps even the Science Media Centre  – particularly as when you actually look at the press release that was sent out it is very level-headed.

It is a shame that some journalists seem to despise press officers (spin doctors by any other name?) when quite a number of us poachers turned gamekeepers, myself included, would leap back over to their side of the fence given half a chance.

My mad dog

This is my mad dog Pip attempting to kill her rubber oinking pig… I don’t know how she doesn’t hurt herself but she seems quite happy!

Writing challenges

I used to have a lot of imagination. Creative writing was one of my favourite things at junior school; when I was a child my dad used to bring his work computer home at the weekends and I would spend hours writing stories about anything and everything.

But somehow over the years I seem to have lost the knack. There wasn’t much call for creative writing skills as my education went on and I forgot what it was like to weave a spell over a blank page. When I became a journalist I enjoyed weaving a different kind of spell but the spells those words produced created a different kind of magic.

On one of my recent browses through iTunes I came across Writing Challenges, a podcast from Warwick University, which leads the listener “through a series of creative writing challenges designed to help you develop your creativity and talent as a writer and reader”.

I didn’t really expect that I would actually take any of the challenges but here I am, having only listened to four of the podcasts, preparing to do just that.

Appropriately enough, it was the episode The Mental Switch that switched me on to giving it a try. In this episode the host, David Morley, Director of the Warwick Writing Programme, suggests opening 30 books at random and noting down the first sentence you see on strips of paper. He tells you to leave these strips in a bag overnight and the next day to pick out one strip. Then, you must write for five minutes – starting with that sentence. You’re not to think, just write. For no more, no less, than five minutes. Do this each day for a month. Easy? I doubt it. But it certainly won’t take up too much time!

David Morley suggests this will help flip “the mental switch” and “translate the desire to write into the will to write”.

I have picked out my 30 sentences and will start tomorrow. Seems right to start on the first of the month! By writing my sentences below I hope I will encourage myself to do this and not to fall at the first hurdle! I don’t plan to write up my jottings on here – unless I manage to produce something good! – but I hope it will indeed get me started and help me realise that I have still have creative bones within me

1. Not long after leaving Oslo I became aware with a sense of unease that no one on the bus was smoking.

2. “Come hither with me,” said the old man, “and I will give you such welcome as I may.”

3. I looked at him in silent reproach, for I frankly did not believe him.

4. It’s amazing what we can do with computers nowadays.

5. There were live-in girlfriends from time to time, but none lasted very long.

6. After a time they crossed a black creek, stepping with care on the dry backs of humped stones.

7. The Control Room girls took a table near the serving hatch for their evening meal.

8. Your kids will always know what a special mother they had.

9. His head swiveled toward me, and I could see that he was startled, but the fact was that I was suddenly actually reeling with anger.

10. I’m not just shy, I’m tired, very tired.

11. The waitress arrives, and we hurriedly consult our menus.

12. Ten minutes in to my second viewing, I suddenly realised I’d made a terrible, baffling mistake.

13. Together, they went over to the corpse and knelt beside it.

14. You probably do know what you’re talking about, and can safely energize your prose with active verbs.

15. Michael Murdoch opened his eyes at about ten minutes to ten that evening to find the same pretty face looking down at him.

16. He had the knife, and they had no weapons at all.

17. Everywhere there was a drowsy humming in the air; nature was only a step away, if you knew which direction to step.

18. Her eyesight faded, as did her hearing.

19. First she had to get rid of the car, then book a seat on the first available plane to London.

20. We climbed out the window and my parents never knew a thing.

21. With my head bowed I knelt in the long queue waiting for my turn.

22. There was the one terrible Sunday that she wasn’t there.

23. He left his cabin and walked down the steel-cold passageway, pausing to knock on his wife’s door.

24. I haven’t received my pack from the State about what to do in the event of a civil emergency, though one must be on its way.

25. Life was, after all, like air.

26. The taxi driver seems gloomy.

27. No dream distorted the images of the evening into horrific shapes.

28. We asked him what he was reading.

29. She was light and watery, like a newt, but all of her parts were human.

30. “Do you manage an antiques shop or something?”

Ten points to anyone who can identify where any of the sentences come from!

Prince reveals childhood epilepsy – BBC

I’ve often said that I wished a celebrity would “come out” as having epilepsy – given that 456,000 or one in every 131 people in the UK has epilepsy there must be at least one – but this wasn’t quite what I had in mind…

I just came across this story on the BBC website Prince reveals childhood epilepsy - and no, it’s not Wills or Harry. It’s that wacky squiggle-monikered pop pixie, who has “has revealed for the first time that he was ‘born epileptic’ and that his parents struggled to cope with his seizures”. Thanks a lot, Prince, for reiterating the expression “epileptic” in such an ugly way. “Born epileptic” just has such an awful ring to it. People with epilepsy are not defined by the condition.

And not only that, but he “recalled how as a child he believed divine intervention had helped him overcome the illness”. If only it was that easy, that an angel would come and take it all away.

I truly feel that interviews like this only reinforce stereotypes – the weird kid that everyone teased, the parents who can’t cope. Where are all the strong role models that kids and adults with epilepsy can look up to and say “they are doing fine, and so will I”?

Eight-legged freak

I have just had the fright of my life!

I don’t want to give the impression that I am an arachnophobe – in fact, I am the chief spider-catcher in our house. Catcher being the operative word – not for me a quick swipe with a newspaper or whack with a shoe. Nope, I catch the little blighters under a glass (specially chosen depending on spider size), slide some paper or card underneath and take them outside. OK, so I usually put them over the fence at the end of the garden, but I don’t want them to come back, do I?

But on this occasion there was no time for any of that.

I’d just had a lovely deep hot bath listening to my iPod and reading Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn (very funny stuff), and felt perfectly relaxed. I stood up in the tub and reached over to pick up my towel from the towel rail. I wrapped the towel round me and felt something brush my leg.

I looked down, and floating – actually, not floating; swimming – round the tub was the most enormous spider you have ever seen.

We have had some whoppers in our house, usually scurrying purposefully across the living room floor, but I catch them without any feeling of dread. This one, however, resisted my encouragements to get into the quickly grabbed glass and instead continued to paddle round and round towards certain death. Several fruitless attempts later I decided I couldn’t stand around to watch it drown and went and hid in another room.

This might have been a bad move. When I came back into the bathroom the bath was empty and there was no spider. But, I thought, did it go down the plughole or did it somehow escape? Was it dead when it went down the plughole or is it still clinging there waiting for revenge? Is its family lurking in our hand towels, in my wardrobe, in my underwear drawer?

Remember, spider family, I have saved many of your kind. Don’t hold the (possible) death of Big Daddy against me. Please.