Sidebar scientists
One suggestion I made as the Science Media Centre (SMC) was set up was to encourage media to use experts to complement journalists’ stories with a sidebar of the “bare bones” of the science associated with the story.
Everyone will know how this works. Readers who want more than the storyline or who want “just the facts” have a condensed pointer to the background written independently by someone knowledgeable on the topic at hand. The reason I bring it up is that perhaps it’s one way to involve scientists in science communication without involving a lot of time or asking that they write a complete piece.
This may be particularly well-suited to digital editions (i.e. on-line), where WWW addresses (URLs) to further reading can be given directly as links and where the layout is more easily adapted to include a sidebar.
Any thoughts?
17 Responses to “Sidebar scientists”
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by LGD and SciCom Robot, Sciblogs NZ. Sciblogs NZ said: Sidebar scientists: One suggestion I made as the Science Media Centre (SMC) was set up was to encourage media to.. http://bit.ly/2AiYr […]
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by sciblogsnz: Sidebar scientists: One suggestion I made as the Science Media Centre (SMC) was set up was to encourage media to.. http://bit.ly/2AiYr…
That sounds like a really good idea. It will enable readers to easily get more information if they want to.
It’s definitely something we’ve been considering here at the Science Media Centre Grant. That and making a service available where we can produce material for graphics to accompany stories. The SMC in the UK has a person devoted to this fulltime because graphics play such an important part in stories in papers like the Times and the Guardian. These are both potential services we are going to get feedback from the media on when we survey them. A bare bones science sidebar with a tinyurl pointing to more info online would be ideal.
Hear, hear.
(But down with tinyurls, Peter. Their convenience make the internet more fragile. And why use them if you have an href tag.)
[…] sugÂgesÂtion for improvÂing media covÂerÂage of techÂniÂcal issues. He calls it sideÂbar sciÂence. A scientist-developed inforÂmaÂtion box is appended to an online news artiÂcle for furÂther […]
Graphics for visualisation would also be helpful. I agree with Daniel about the tinyURLs. Just have some good anchor text.
The use of tinyurl idea depends on what you’re doing, I think. If it’s for an ordinary web page, I don’t there is a need, but the situation here can be more complex.
If the copy is for both print and digital editions, the tinyurl is needed/sensible for the print edition.
Other media might have trouble if the URLs are not given explicitly, e.g. email, twitter, etc.
While you don’t to explicitly give the URLs for the WWW copy, there was (used to be) an argument for giving URLs explicitly so that people can copy them (as in cut’n’paste). Now you can do this anyway, e.g. via control-clicking the link, so it’s no longer an issue in most cases, although it can still be a nuisance if someone has stuck some popup or whatnot that fires on you rolling over the link, as some blogs or websites do.
On plain web pages, I think you’re right though: ‘a’ tags are better.
Footnote: Let me put on my really really picky pedantic hat: it’s actually an href attribute of an a tag (or element) 😉 Oooh, us scientists are pedants 🙂 Computer geeks can be too, so imagine a scientific computing geek… 🙂 Takes off sharp pointy hat Say, this is starting to sound like someone on Big Bang Theory…
[…] Sidebar scientists […]
[…] Sidebar scientists […]
[…] Sidebar scientists […]
[…] together with sidebar science, and perhaps extended with a personal narrative, these types of presentations can make for […]
[…] Sidebar scientists […]
[…] Sidebar scientists […]
[…] form or style. My focus is on the objective of the writing. In principle science writing could be sidebar science or even editorials, which have their own typical […]
[…] Sidebar scientists […]
[…] offered something akin this in an early blog post, a ‘science sidebar’. My suggestion was for independent experts to offer to media, I can’t see any reason researchers […]