Laura Nelson (LN) So, first, can you tell me what your perception of a press officer’s job is?

Ian Sample (IS) Their main role is surely to promote the interests of the organisation they represent in the media. In the sciences, that will often mean finding out about, and promoting research. That means knowing what everyone’s up to in their labs and offices, getting their papers in advance, putting out releases, gathering images, video and audio as relevant, and making sure the researchers are available to talk to the press in good time. Also, they will be putting experts forward to comment on other stories in the media. Occasionally, they will need to do some damage limitation work too, which could well involve restricting media access to certain staff.

LN Part of a press officer’s role is to help you do your job. What are press officers doing wrong?

IS Press officers are all different. There are some amazing ones and others that are ineffective, at least from a journalist’s perspective. The list of things some press officers do wrong is quite long. A quick look at the past few days’ emails gives a flavour:

- Press releases on subjects I don’t deal with and never have.
- Press releases on incredibly boring research.
- Press releases that do not quantify research findings in a meaningful way.
- A press release issued ‘for immediate release’ in the late afternoon.
- Press releases that do not give mobiles / direct lines to researchers.
- Press releases issued a week AFTER the research it describes is published.
- Press releases that give nonsensical embargoes, such as the minute a press     conference begins.

You get the idea.

What journalists want is very simple. For bread and butter journal stories, they want easy access, at least a day or two in advance, to the researchers, to their research paper/results, and they want pics/video/audio if appropriate. For on-the-hoof stories like swine flu, they just want to talk to the researcher quickly. That’s the wishlist, and certainly I’d never rely on, or expect, a press officer to do all those things.

LN Can you give us any examples of bad press officer behaviour (excluding names)?

IS Best be kind and say something like ‘suboptimal’ rather than bad. Things that are frustrating include: No one picking up the phone in the press office. Press officers saying Prof X isn’t available, but when you get Prof X’s mobile number from Prof Y, they chat quite happily. Press officers calling back days later, when they’ve surely seen that the story has already been published. I had one situation where I was first to inform a university press office that one of their staff had won a Nobel Prize. I asked if I could be first on the list to interview them, but despite calling back all through the day, I got nowhere. Then the researcher calls me at 7pm, when my copy is written, edited and on its way to the printer.

LN What would be your definition of a good press officer – is there such a thing?

IS There are loads of great press officers. And I understand why the bad ones are bad. Funding and resources are lousy; researchers are terrible at flagging up their own work in a timely fashion, and giving their mobile numbers and so on. For me, a good press officer is someone who is able to flag up forthcoming research that’s interesting; put me in touch with the researcher in good time and help out with any images, video etc

LN Do you have views on the usefulness of different types of press officers – press officers at journals, universities or charities, for example?

IS The press officers for the leading journals really set the gold standard for the business. They don’t promote mediocre research; they provide scientists’ contact details that work; arrange teleconferences with researchers who might otherwise be unreachable; they’ll have images and video available. All in time so the material can be worked on and prepared in time for the embargo lifting. But they are lucky in being well resourced. I’m sure other press officers would love to be able to do those kinds of things, but don’t have the capability. Universities and charities are incredibly variable. A small minority of top level universities in Britain have press operations that are staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad. Compared with their equivalents in the US and other countries, they punch considerably below their weight. It makes me genuinely angry. They have some of the top researchers in the world and they squander it, which is a loss to everyone. Among the exceptions are Imperial, UCL and the University of East Anglia, which take it seriously.

LN Were there ‘good old days’? Tell me about them…

IS In terms of press officers, things have never been better. There were worse old days. In terms of journalism, I think there were good old days, but I doubt anyone alive remembers them.

LN It is very unusual that chief executives of organisations give journalists their mobile numbers and respond to calls. How do you get stories from those who may not even give you their mobile numbers?

IS I’ll get the number from someone else.

LN Do you think scientists would put their mobiles on if press officers didn’t tell them to?

IS Some would. In my experience, researchers give out their mobile numbers all the time. If I was a researcher, I’d be happy with my mobile going out by email to a list of named journalists, but I can see problems with those details going on a press release that will end up on websites. Medical researchers get overwhelmed with calls about ‘breakthroughs’ and so on. We are hugely fortunate that the vast majority of scientists are completely comfortable with talking to journalists and are brilliant at explaining their work. It’s a myth and an insult that scientists can’t communicate. The joy of talking to them is a major driver for doing the job.

LN Do you think you would have the time to get all the alerts to the stories you need and the help with them if press officers didn’t exist?

IS Press officers do a great job of flagging up research we wouldn’t otherwise see. Of course we’d miss stories if they weren’t doing that, but plenty of stories are missable.

LN What do you think of embargos? Have you ever broken one? How did you justify it?

IS I’ve never broken an embargo. Some journalists do and succeed in convincing people they got the story through good old journalism. I rarely believe that. I can’t see how breaking an embargo is remotely professionally satisfying. Embargoes are good for researchers and institutions and they help editors plan their coverage. That said, finding exclusives and covering breaking news is far more exciting than writing up embargoed journal papers.

LN What do you think of journalists who switch career to go into PR?

IS I think they want more money.

LN What do you think is the future for press officers, their usefulness and their relationship with journalists?

IS Presumably the job will become more about arranging video interviews, organising visuals and monitoring their researchers’ blogs so they know what they are up to. Blogs are completely bypassing conventional means of managing news.

On 10 September 2008, a particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, switched on a new research facility. Nothing particularly remarkable about that, you may think, but it was the top news story of the day around the world, even knocking the US election campaign off the top spot on American networks. CERN’s website crashed under the strain, but not before exceeding nasa.gov’s traffic, and TV coverage had an estimated reach of one billion people. What made this happen?

As head of communication for that laboratory, I’m interested to know the magic formula for scoring high in the public eye. Was it luck? Was it hard work? Probably a mixture of both. What we do know is that three factors roller-coastered public scrutiny towards the particle physics lab, and their net result was to make CERN stand out.

The luck came in the form of CERN being featured in a best-selling work of fiction. The hard work came in the form of a concerted campaign by the CERN press office over many years to raise the lab’s profile. And the third factor was an unprecedented level of doomsday hype generated by Web 2.0.

A feature in fiction

CERN is a pure research lab that asks the kind of questions about the nature of our universe that have the power to make people dream; the kind of questions that every child asks when they look at the stars. CERN’s researchers have also given us technologies like the world wide web and the underpinnings of some modern medical imaging technologies.

Perhaps that’s why Dan Brown chose to feature CERN in his novel, Angels and Demons, which came out in 2000. The first we knew of it at CERN was when a copy landed in the press office signed by the author and bearing the words ‘remember, it’s fiction’. I got the job of reading the book, and lost no time in recommending to the lab’s management that we get ready for questions should the book leap to the top of the bestseller list. It didn’t, but it alerted us to the fact that CERN was now being considered fair game for authors of fiction. Next came the BBC’s ‘End Day’ in 2003, a drama documentary culminating in the destruction of the Earth when a particle accelerator was switched on in New York. Our research is based on particle accelerators, and our flagship, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is the most powerful on the planet. Science in fiction started to make its way into my presentations to the lab’s management.

Dan Brown’s next book, The Da Vinci Code, did rather better. Once people had had the time to digest that, Angels and Demons finally found its way to the top of the bestsellers list. Should CERN ignore it; should we criticise its fanciful treatment of science, or should we see it as free PR, a chance to get our own messages across by riding on the coat tails of a story that was bigger than us? We chose the latter. We had fun telling the world that we don’t really have a space plane, that some Nobel Prize winners would be up for a game of Frisbee (but not the one mentioned in the book), and if you wanted to make enough antimatter to blow up the Vatican you could…if you had the patience to wait a billion years.

Sony Pictures brought the stars of Angels and Demons to CERN in February this year; the week that we announced the 2009 schedule for the LHC. That week, the LHC made more headlines than the movie – our own story had got even bigger.

Pushing the frontiers

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee made a proposal for an information management system for CERN, his boss scribbled the words ‘vague, but exciting’ on the cover, and the lab switched on a big and powerful particle accelerator that was poised to take our understanding of the universe to new levels. Somewhere in the world, a small group of people was fretting that the end of the world was nigh because of what this new machine might do. Nobody paid them any attention. The following year, Berners-Lee’s vague but exciting idea had become the world wide web, and LEP was running smoothly. It went on to do so for 11 years, fulfilling its scientific potential, and posing no threat whatsoever to the world.

A decade later, the Web had become a part of everyone’s life, the way people share and access information had changed forever as a result of Tim Berners-Lee’s vague but exciting proposal, and a laboratory at Brookhaven in New York state switched on a big and powerful particle accelerator that was poised to take our understanding of the universe to new levels. A handful of people shouted ‘the end of the world is nigh’, and some media outlets took notice. Again, the new accelerator is fulfilling its scientific destiny, with no threat to the world.

By the time CERN was ready to switch on the LHC, however, the web had evolved into Web 2.0, revolutionising the way that people share information. Traditional news media were reinventing themselves simply to survive in a world of social networks and blogs. Broadcasting was becoming passé, giving way to narrowcasting to special interest groups. And communication departments were rapidly trying to figure out how best to adapt to this brave new world. In such an environment, the handful of people proclaiming the end of the world found traction for their message in the blogosphere. Traditional media picked up the story from Web 2.0, and ordinary people started to wonder if there might be anything in such claims. There isn’t. Like its predecessors, the LHC has a scientific destiny to fulfil, and it is poised to make an even bigger impact on our understanding of the universe than either LEP or the accelerator at Brookhaven. There is no risk whatsoever, but there’s no doubt that the doom merchants generated interest in the LHC project.

Meanwhile, back in the press office…

In 2004, CERN turned 50. It gave us the excuse to tell the world’s media that something exciting was about to happen, and invite them to see our visually spectacular installations before they closed up for operation. At the same time, we worked on convincing the lab to switch on the machine in the full glare of the media spotlight. Both strategies were successful. From 2004 to 2007, the number of journalists visiting CERN increased nearly fourfold, and CERN’s management agreed to a public switch-on.

Switching on any particle accelerator is a long and complex process, prone to setbacks. Switching on the world’s most complex scientific instrument, the LHC, was all the more so. Every aspect of the LHC is new, and it was all being operated for the first time in public. Some 300 journalists came to CERN that day to see, and many more participated in the occasion at parallel events around the world. CERN’s communication group works closely with communication professionals in all the labs’ member states and partner laboratories. Without them, the impact would undoubtedly have been smaller. On the day itself, problems were overcome, and there were moments of triumph as the first beam was threaded around the gargantuan machine. And all the world was watching – the lows as well as the highs. At the end of the day, the statistics were mind-boggling. CERN was the new NASA, for a day at least.

A week later, the LHC suffered a major setback from which we’re still recovering, We’re telling the story of how we’re recovering and what we’ve learned from the incident. That’s how progress is made. Later this year, the LHC will be up and running again, and CERN will be telling the story as loudly as it can. CERN is not the new NASA, and the LHC is not Apollo. But if the LHC can have half the impact that the moon shots did, you can bet that we’ll be working on it.

James Gillies
Head of Communication, CERN
james.gillies@cern.ch

First proposed as the Association of Scientific Societies Public Relations Officers (yes, that really is ASSPRO for short), Stempra started as a scribble on a napkin and ended up a thriving pinnacle of success. Three Stempra committee members track its history from conception, and look forward to a brand new constitution.

The good ole days
Moving to a larger committee
Constitutional matters

The good ole days

Like most good things, Stempra was dreamed up over lunch. The brainchild of Stephen White of the British Psychological Society and Jill Nelson, who was then at the Royal Society and is now the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, the idea was for an association of science communications folk who would benefit from the chance to meet other like-minded individuals.

Bringing together non-commercial science, medical and engineering communicators in 1993, this was to be an association that could support those who felt isolated and undervalued by their own organisations. With the help of Peter Cooper and the Royal Society’s extensive address book, the pair contacted scientific societies and recruited their first 50 participants.

Stephen says: “The first few years were fascinating because all we wanted to do was create excellent networking opportunities for the members. We did, and lots would turn up.”  Early events included meet-the-journalist experiences, which Stephen remembers were “particularly popular, and an eye-opener for many of our less experienced members”.

The Public Understanding of Science movement was just emerging and challenging the existing dynamics between scientists, the public and intermediaries of all kinds. With word-of-mouth advertising and a reputation for being friendly and helpful and organising good events, the size of the organisation increased steadily.

“Then as now, Stempra put great value on sharing information and providing practical support,” says Dianne Stilwell, now an independent consultant and a founding member along with Stephen. “I think almost all the early meetings were technique- and issue-focused. I remember sessions on crisis PR, how to work with designers, public affairs and lobbying, what makes a good press photo and event organisation.”

Moving to a larger committee

The early committee had eight members, which has recently expanded to 15 (see below). The committee members bring a wealth of expertise to the organisation, with current members working for a diverse range of organisations such as the Department of Health, Science Media Centre, Human Tissue Authority and universities from around the country. Their jobs cover the broad gamut of communications including working as a press officer and public and policy affairs.

Katrina Nevin-Ridley, who chairs the committee and is Head of Media at the Wellcome Trust, says: “Stempra could not function and put on such a range of exciting and relevant events without the commitment and the hard work of all the committee members. Each person brings something different to the mix.

“Members are always at the end of an email or phone and work in their spare time to deliver worthwhile events, providing great networking opportunities. There are also our unsung heroes, who work tirelessly behind the scenes. These include Robbie Walker our treasurer, who is a true treasure and looks after membership and accounts, and Simon Levey, who manages the website.”

Ruth Francis from Nature is one of the new members who joined the Stempra Committee this year. “As Head of Press for Nature I enjoy an international perspective on the press officer role, which I hope is both useful and interesting for the committee,” she says.

Others who joined the Stempra committee this year are Laura Nelson, who works for the Human Tissue Authority, Jenny Gimpel from UCL, Helen Jamison from the Science Media Centre, Becky Purvis from the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) and Bob Ward from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Members of the committee also represent different regions of the country, with Alex Waddington from the University of Manchester and Tara Womersley from the University of Edinburgh. Hazel Lambert, who works for the Medical Research Council, also recently moved from London to the Edinburgh office.

So what do the founding members think of the organisation now? Another early member, Barbara Davies of Understanding Animal Research (then the Research Defence Society), says: “Stempra has admirably fulfilled the role of an informal network of science PR people who can all learn from each other.”

But Stephen also wonders if, heady with success, we’ve allowed ourselves to be blinkered. “We are now very nearly a separate industry”, he says, “and that is perhaps where we’ve made mistakes. Communicating science is no different from communicating anything else, but we still keep trying to invent wheels that already exist.”

So how can we eliminate that, now that we live in a world where communication takes place 24/7 via so many more means? An ability to look sideways at the competition is vital to staying ahead, says Stephen. And that’s what Stempra must strive for.

Constitutional matters

At our last AGM, we made what at first seemed a straightforward change to the constitution – to expand the committee size from an overstretched eight members to 15. Following lively discussion at the AGM, we went back to look at the constitution and realised that this change was more complicated, as the original committee was cleverly balanced in terms of numbers and roles. So we set up a sub-group to identify whether the constitution needed updating to reflect the changing face and role of Stempra, and, if so, how such changes would help the constitution to continue to serve the organisation in the long term.

Stempra’s founding constitution was very robust so the group didn’t identify any radical changes. But there were some areas that needed some updating or modifying. For example, we increased the size of the committee with two new officers – a Newsletter Editor and a Web & Online Manager – and two corresponding ordinary members to retain the core committee’s balance. We introduced quorums at meetings to ensure single individuals cannot make decisions that will affect the whole Stempra membership. We clarified decision-making procedures, strengthened the criteria that must be met to make serious changes to the constitution in future, and revised and amalgamated some of the organisation’s stated aims to bring them up-to-date with what our members do and need from Stempra.

Tracking down and consulting some of the founding and previous Stempra committee members, the group produced some final proposed changes to the constitution. The aim is that these changes remain true to the initial purposes of Stempra while enabling the organisation to continue to develop and grow in a changing environment and ultimately remain relevant to the needs of its members.

So what happens now? To modify the constitution before the next AGM we must hold a Special General Meeting. We will ensure you receive details of the date, time and place and the planned business at least three weeks in advance. At the meeting there will be an opportunity to discuss and raise any concerns over the proposed changes and they will then be decided by a simple majority of those present and eligible to vote. Each Stempra member has one vote which must be given personally.

Following the meeting, we will circulate the updated constitution and place it on the Stempra website.

Simon Levey
Communications Officer, Queen Mary, University of London
SimonL@stempra.org.uk

Tara Womersley
Press and PR Officer, University of Edinburgh
Tara@stempra.org.uk

Becky Purvis
Policy and Public Affairs Manager, AMRC
Becky@stempra.org.uk