By Daniel Lane

Helen Chickering is a former medical reporter for NBC News Channel and a member of the UNC science and medical journalism advisory board. Her reports were broadcast on more than 200 NBC affiliates around the country. She has covered health issues since 1985 and was a past president of the National Association of Medical Communicators. She now works as a freelance reporter/producer and science communication educator in Asheville, N.C. Recently she spoke with second-year master’s student Dan Lane. The following is a condensed version of that conversation.

Q: How did you get started in medical journalism?

A: My first job was at a small NBC affiliate in Jackson Miss., WLBT. I did weekend weather and was an assignment reporter and fill-in anchor.  I was handed, in 1986 or 1987, a health and science reporting beat. That was when beats like environment or health were just being tested in television stations. Nobody wanted it so I was literally handed the beat.  

What struck me right away about that beat was that there were really no set rules. That is, if you were covering the legislature, you knew how to do reporting and how to check your facts and there were all kinds of people in the newsroom who could help you. But with health reporting I was on my own. So I felt like a fish out of water, and science had really intimidated me in school so it was doubly intimidating.

Q: What drove you to stay in medical reporting?

A: I really liked the beat, but I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. The American Medical Association put on a health communications conference. I got a scholarship and attended. I was probably one of the few reporters. I did an hour-long, one-on-one critique session. It was great, some of the best feedback I had gotten. "Where were your sources? Did you read a study?" I was just like "Holy smoke."

I remember leaving that critique session thinking, "I've found what I want to do." That hour really changed my life. I started going to every workshop I could and reading everything I could so I could learn as much as I could. 

Q: What was your experience at NBC News like?

A: That was a whole different world in many different ways. I was called in to create the health desk. What was shocking was that New York had all these resources, and we started from the ground ... Network life was not at all what I thought it would be.

I had this vision of "I'm working with the network and I’m going to have all these resources, and I'll get to cover the big stories." I did get to cover the big stories, but when you're not right at 30 Rock, it's like being in local news with a few more toys, but not much. But I got to cover stories I never would have gotten to cover.

I learned so much about balanced coverage and really sharpened my deadline skills. You really get a sense of the impact you can have when a story goes out. You get calls from the American Medical Association or the British Medical Journal and you learn more than ever that you have to really get it right. 

Q: Do you have any tips for young journalists on how to report balanced stories that also reflect the scientific data?

A: The analogy that first comes to mind is a story I did on animal research. There was a proposal that some shelter dogs might be used for animal research. It was never clear exactly what. But there was science, and there was a huge protest about unfair treatment of animals. So I worked really hard to give each side equal time, 30 seconds here, 30 seconds here and I clocked it.

What I didn’t realize was that I was talking about dogs being used in cardiac research, and the video I used was cute dogs. So even though the time was fair, you see those pictures and you're toast. So I've learned to be really careful about my video.

If you're going to point a finger and say, "You’re the bad guy," that's investigative. That's a different type of reporting. But if you're going to fairly report a situation you can't side with anyone. You have to be careful about your video, about the sound bites you use.

If you're doing the story about vaccines and autism, and you interview the scientist who says, "We see no connection between autism and vaccines," and on the other side, you have the parent group and the child for whom everything was fine until he got that vaccine. That's really not balanced, that's not the other side. The other side is any study you can find that might show otherwise. 

Even if the study proves otherwise, we are there to present facts, and the facts will trigger the change. It's really hard when you're covering the environment or children. Health and science really lend themselves to those kinds of topics. And here's the challenge, the interesting sound bites are the one where they’re emotive, but it may be totally shaping the story or off or out of context. The hardest part is giving up that beautiful bite because it turns your piece into an editorial. 

Q: So what do you do now?

A: I do a lot of workshops and talks now with scientists about communicating to the general public without losing the integrity of their research.

My new passion is helping people find other ways to communicate because writing out an elevator speech doesn't work for everyone. I also want to find other ways for scientists and science communicators to practice. It’s called the Practice Room Project, and it's in the works right now. Basically the dream is to find ways to use Skype or the Internet or other methods ... to meet a group of other scientists and practice your speeches together.

I think that's what we need now. There are lots of great programs where you can learn techniques for science communication but you go back home or back to your lab and you don't practice it. 

It's like speaking Spanish. The lay public speaks a different language, and we just need to practice it. It's easy to say that the public is dumb because they don't get it, and scientists are just stuffy and bad communicators. No. Not really. Not at all. We just speak different languages, and we just haven't taken the time to learn each others' language. That's why I think we just need to take the time to practice those skills.  

By Courtni Kopietz

For students summer can include a break from classes, but it is also a chance to gain experience for future careers. I was fortunate enough to gain experiences from two, very different internships last summer.

I first worked as a multimedia reporter at stemwire.org, a digital publication produced through UNC's Reese News Lab. The lab wanted to further the conversation about STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — education by engaging audiences in new ways. I was part of a four-person staff and expanded my skill set working as editor, reporter, videographer and photographer.

Here are some of the articles that I worked on:

• "Science of baseball: STEM at the College World Series"
• "Barrier Island workshop helps teachers combine history and STEM"
• "NC ‘STEM for Kids’ camp promotes 21st-century skills"

Beyond reporting stories, my colleagues and I established a network of sources and readers through social media, primarily Twitter. We engaged a community of educators, students, parents and education policymakers in conversation while distributing relevant news about STEM education.

In the second half of my summer I worked at the NC Foundation for Advanced Health Programs, where I still work. At the foundation I handled internal communications, including writing content for a new website, establishing a social media presence through Facebook and Twitter, and documenting activities through photo and video. I am also starting a quarterly newsletter reporting on activities of the foundation and promoting the organization's work to local news media.

My work outside the school and my classes at UNC have made me aware of the several paths I could take in science and medical journalism. 

Update from second-year master's student Daniel Lane: A summer at UNC-TV