Dear Faculty,
I hope the beginning of your semester has been enjoyable. I am back again to encourage you all to consider submitting pitches for The Conversation, and to work with us if/when we reach out with story pitches in the future.
The Conversation is a platform that allows you to get your work in front of thousands of new readers and introduce it to a new audience.
But don’t just take my word for it.
Tom Langen has worked with The Conversation numerous times and speaks highly of the experience. Check out what he had to say about the process and the outcomes.
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It has been a pleasure for me to write and work with editors for The Conversation. I have written four articles that were based on The Conversation’s calls for writers (on how geese migrate, technologies for tracking bird migration, the phenomenon of starling murmurations, and whether humans can survive without other species), and one that was based on my own pitch (on deer-vehicle accidents in fall and the time change).
I didn’t have to be a research authority on each of those topics; I just had to know a lot more than the general reader.
Basically if I am sent a topic that intrigues me by the Marketing & External Relations Office – or make my own pitch – I draft a short ‘bullet-point’ outline of what I would treat in an article. I think about what might be the interesting and relevant things I could say about the topic in a 1,000’ish word article, and what would be the “take-home message.” I take about a half-hour looking at the research literature relevant to the article, to see whether there are some recent studies by others that might support the points I’ll make or provide good examples.
If The Conversation accepts my pitch – and it always has if I respond quickly enough – I am assigned an editor to work with. I have always been matched with an editor who actually knows something about the topic. The editor usually has some suggestions about article content, too. We negotiate a deadline, which for my articles have been reasonable, generally a few weeks. I do know that for some articles related to current hot news topics, the turnaround is much shorter.
I spend a couple of hours reading papers related to my topic, and it takes about two or three hours to write the first draft, and then paste it into the online editing platform. An interesting feature of writing for The Conversation is that the editing platform is an expert system. It evaluates the text in terms of how difficult a read it is. The editor will have a goal – maybe a smart 8th grader. My first draft is usually for a much more advanced reader than the target. The platform indicates sentences that should be broken up and shortened, words that are too advanced for the target readers, paragraphs that are too long. Frankly, I find it fun to try to edit the article for a target audience. The editing takes an hour or two.
At this stage, I also hotlink the sources. The Conversation requires scholarly sources to back up the content. I link to a journal abstract, an organization’s website, a youtube video clip, or other relevant resource. I also find images or videos to illustrate the article – I provide my own or suggest from the creative commons or websites that can be acknowledged.
The editor is then alerted, and they take about a week to make their own edits and comments. These are all tracked – I get the final say in the content. We may go through a couple rounds of alternating edits, making changes, adding a little clarifying content, or cutting stuff that is least essential. I always have to cut, because I write longer drafts than the target word limit.
Once ready, the article is released. I can track the number of readers, and where it is reprinted. Articles receive comments, and I respond to those.
Altogether, I estimate it takes about eight hours to go from writing a pitch to a published article. I don’t receive any money for doing this journalism. So why do I find it worthwhile?
1) The national and international reach has been extraordinary. My family in Indiana has seen articles I wrote in their local paper. I had an article under my name published in the print and online Washington Post. I have been online in the Smithsonian Magazine, The Weather Network, Popular Science, and many more. I have had high readership in South Africa, Poland, Denmark, UK and Australia, but some readers in about every country in the world. I’ve had about 320,000 reads altogether, and the articles continue to be read – for some reason, maybe because mine aren’t tied to particular news events, they continue to be of interest to people and continue to be ‘findable’.
2) Some of my articles have been translated into Danish, Polish, Japanese, and Indonesian.
3) I have been contacted to serve as an expert source for other articles, based on The Conversation articles. It is another way to become recognized as a scholarly authority, and has much greater reach than a typical university press release.
4) I have enjoyed the writing process, and learned to be a better general audience writer. It has improved my writing and science communication. Because I do want to be able to reach a general audience as a scientist, this is important to me.
Here are the links to my items with The Conversation:
Langen, T.A. 2022. Birds migrate along ancient routes – here are the latest high-tech tools scientists are using to
study their amazing journeys. The Conversation, 2 September 2022.
https://theconversation.com/do-humans-really-need-other-species-185171
Langen, T.A. 2022. Curious Kids: Why do humans really need other species? The Conversation, 29 August 2022.
(Also published in Japanese, Indonesian)
https://theconversation.com/do-humans-really-need-other-species-185171
Langen, T.A. 2022. Curious Kids: Why do flocks of birds swoop and swirl together in the sky? A biologist explains
the science of murmurations. The Conversation, 14 March 2022. Republished in the Washington Post, 9 April
2022 (Also published in Japanese, Polish)
Republished by the Washington Post 4/9/22
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/09/mumurations-birds/
Langen, T.A. 2021. Another problem with daylight saving time: The time change raises your risk of hitting deer on
the road. The Conversation, 4 November 2021.
Langen, T.A. 2021. Fall means more deer on the road: 4 ways time of day, month and year raise your risk of
Crashes. The Conversation, 21 September 2021. https://theconversation.com/fall-means-more-deer-on-the-road-4-ways-time-of-day-month-and-year-raise-your-risk-of-crashes-167489
Langen, T.A. 2020. Curious Kids: How do geese know how to fly south for the winter? The Conversation, 16
November 2020. https://theconversation.com/how-do-geese-know-how-to-fly-south-for-the-winter-149225#
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I’d like to thank Tom for taking the time to outline his experience and why he thinks working with The Conversation is a worthwhile endeavor. My hope is to continue to work to bring the great work of our Clarkson faculty to a larger and broader audience.
If you’re interested in writing for The Conversation, click here to check out some information on pitching to The Conversation, or reach out to me directly with any questions you have.
Tom has also been generous enough to offer to speak with anyone who may have questions about The Conversation. If you’d prefer to speak with him, please feel free to email him at tlangen@clarkson.edu.
Thank you, and I hope to hear from you soon!
Jake Newman
Director of Media Relations
jnewman@clarkson.edu