He or she also has to be available. You can't launch a story of a great discovery and then say you're too busy in your lab to answer any questions. He and his students tabulated the types of science stories that tend to be the most popular. Number three was a surprise. Paleontology and archaeology are very popular.
People are really interested in dinosaurs.
I don't know if that's a Jurassic Park effect. Lefebvre notes that a paper appearing in one of the heavyweight journals Science, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine or The Lancet has a far greater chance of capturing media attention than research published elsewhere. But he says another factor is also at play. These publications have their own teams of public relations experts who tip off the media about a handful of papers in each issue of their respective journals. These people alert the press to breakthroughs that are considered to be especially significant and explain the research to them in laymen's terms.