[Outreach] Press interviews

In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of an academic career is public outreach. Sadly, I think it's also one of the least appreciated aspects among the people occupying said academic careers, and usually the first to be dropped when time and/or funding is tight.

As a PhD student I was heavily involved in the operation of the Astronomy department's mobile, inflatable planetarium. I even coordinated the program for two and a half years! We travelled all over Eastern Scotland giving shows to the public, and I loved it. Since starting my Postdoc position I've given several public talks, mostly at careers events. These have been great fun, and I learnt a lot about presenting from one of the outreach officers in the department at Warwick.

But in the last six months or so I've started getting involved in a different side of the public engagement game - press interviews. These have been simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, but on the whole I've enjoyed them quite a bit. The press office here seem to be pretty happy with how I've done too, as they keep recommending me to TV and Radio stations as a strong interviewee, which is a great endorsement and has boosted my confidence quite a bit.

The first interview I gave was to the TV station France24, back before Christmas. They were looking for someone to talk about the pending perihelion approach of comet 67P, the comet that the Rosetta mission visited. I was nervous, but I think that I did a decent job and Tom, the press office representative keeping an eye on me, was pleased so it must have gone fairly well. 

After that experience I then moved onto radio interviews, and spent an afternoon talking about Tim Peake's mission to the ISS on various BBC local radio stations. It was a mix of recorded and live interviews, and although there was a bit of down time in the schedule it was a pretty intense afternoon. I was sat at a desk with a couple of microphones and my laptop, headphones on, waiting for a voice to appear in my ear asking if I was ready for the next presenter to talk to me. What was nice was that the BBC rep. who set up the interviews had called and asked me some questions in advance, and had sent me a couple of news articles to read over, so I had some idea of what questions would be asked. Even so there were a few that came out of left field! You could also tell that some of the presenters were mode interested than others.

The next morning I was on TV again, talking on Sky news about Tim Peake. Sky then called me while I was away on holiday over the New Year asking for an interview that I sadly had to turn down. A couple of weeks ago though I was back on Sky news talking about the potential for their being a ninth planet in the Solar system. I was more comfortable with that one as it was right in my area of interest and expertise. Finally, for now at least, I was on TV again today talking about the discovery of gravitational waves on TRT International.

I'm really enjoying my burgeoning press career, and I hope that I get some more interviews in the near future. But I might try and attend a media training workshop before then, as so far I've just been going on my own instincts. Still, I feel I've done pretty well, and have certainly been doing my bit to bring science to the public.