It wasn't much of a contribution to the scientific canon, I know, but it was fun. Driven on by the grim career prospects in British science, I ended up at Britain's biggest-circulation daily broadsheet, the Daily Telegraph. When I joined Fleet Street in 1986, AIDS and Chernobyl were the big stories. That audience distrusts hacks as much as boffins. But scientists could still learn from journalists.
Journalists think carefully about their audience and communicate accordingly.
Journalism is not merely about writing but about seizing a story by the scruff of the neck. I have spent most of a day being thrown off the car deck of a ferry to understand what sank the Herald of Free Enterprise, sprinted down a road in pursuit of a gene therapist in the quest for a scoop, and told Tony Blair that his science minister should take a bungee jump off the Dome to illustrate Newtonian dynamics for National Science Week. I face stiff competition within the paper. To carve out a slot among column inches of murder, politics, and mayhem, I file three or more stories daily. Under this pressure, stories rarely grow beyond 800 words.