Thank you for this post; I'm a science journalist and this is one of many things about the state of the profession that gnaws on my thoughts every single day. I really hope people pay attention to what you've written.
In future posts hope you'll discuss the incentives structures at play in journalism; as an early-career freelancer, I was honestly rather intimidated thinking about what the individual-level takeaways for journalists at the end of the post will mean for me. I think many of us would love to learn data journalism, take a stats class, stop covering single studies, search for trends, develop new beats covering policy, and be granted access to Scopus and Web of Science. But the incentives just aren't aligned. Journalists have bills to pay and we can write what we're paid (enough) for. The types of stories and beats you're describing take way more research and time to develop, but still get paid the same pitiful per-word rate as a single-study story I can pitch straightforwardly based on a single document to an editor who understands and wants that format, and which I can write in an afternoon after talking to two sources.
I think you were gesturing at these challenges by pointing out the decline of stable newsroom jobs, but there's a lot to unpack when it comes to incentives in science journalism. We live in the world we're in, and individual journalists should be taking this seriously and reacting as we can. I'm personally trying to reorient a bit towards metascience and policy, and I'm learning to use AI to triage and sift through the sea of new studies. But that won't be enough. The institutions, philanthropists, organizations, editors, and others who decide what to pay us and how our careers are shaped need to react, too.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments on this post and my prior one.
You raise some tough issues. At the Washington Post when I was there you could spend a whole year on a project if it was a good one. I realize that is not the norm. It is especially difficult, as you say, if you are freelance.
Without offering any easy answers, I’d say a few things.
1) Just thinking in the way you are thinking here will make your quicker turnaround stories richer, I suspect.
2) As you get more established freelancing, I hope you can find a little more ability to pitch editors something that takes longer to do, and runs longer when it publishes. I hope. Also, you can try to have a few projects in the research stage that you dabble in, that can lead to deeper stories that you haven’t pitched yet.
3) I do agree, we need to create more media space for just the kind of work you’re saying is difficult to pitch, or have time for, or get paid well for. Well, this is what places like Substack are for, right? If the model isn’t working somewhere else, maybe it can work here. Let me give this a little more thought.
Thank you! I'm trying to do 2) already. I do write features; but they're still mostly based on studies and interviews (easier and faster to do) and less on data and in-person reportage.
To point 3, to mention just one thing I wonder about: person-based grants (to steal an idea from the metascience world) as opposed to project-based "give me money to report this one thing once" grants in journalism that provide consistent funding+training as an on-ramp for journalists to build independent audiences on social platforms. Unless you're already famous or very lucky, it takes a long time to build enough momentum doing independent content. In general, grants intended to help with building something new (a platform, a beat, a skillset, etc.) rather than just executing a single reporting project could maybe help replace some of the stability and risk-taking opportunity lost as more journalists work outside newsrooms.
Thank you for this post; I'm a science journalist and this is one of many things about the state of the profession that gnaws on my thoughts every single day. I really hope people pay attention to what you've written.
In future posts hope you'll discuss the incentives structures at play in journalism; as an early-career freelancer, I was honestly rather intimidated thinking about what the individual-level takeaways for journalists at the end of the post will mean for me. I think many of us would love to learn data journalism, take a stats class, stop covering single studies, search for trends, develop new beats covering policy, and be granted access to Scopus and Web of Science. But the incentives just aren't aligned. Journalists have bills to pay and we can write what we're paid (enough) for. The types of stories and beats you're describing take way more research and time to develop, but still get paid the same pitiful per-word rate as a single-study story I can pitch straightforwardly based on a single document to an editor who understands and wants that format, and which I can write in an afternoon after talking to two sources.
I think you were gesturing at these challenges by pointing out the decline of stable newsroom jobs, but there's a lot to unpack when it comes to incentives in science journalism. We live in the world we're in, and individual journalists should be taking this seriously and reacting as we can. I'm personally trying to reorient a bit towards metascience and policy, and I'm learning to use AI to triage and sift through the sea of new studies. But that won't be enough. The institutions, philanthropists, organizations, editors, and others who decide what to pay us and how our careers are shaped need to react, too.
Hi Elise,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments on this post and my prior one.
You raise some tough issues. At the Washington Post when I was there you could spend a whole year on a project if it was a good one. I realize that is not the norm. It is especially difficult, as you say, if you are freelance.
Without offering any easy answers, I’d say a few things.
1) Just thinking in the way you are thinking here will make your quicker turnaround stories richer, I suspect.
2) As you get more established freelancing, I hope you can find a little more ability to pitch editors something that takes longer to do, and runs longer when it publishes. I hope. Also, you can try to have a few projects in the research stage that you dabble in, that can lead to deeper stories that you haven’t pitched yet.
3) I do agree, we need to create more media space for just the kind of work you’re saying is difficult to pitch, or have time for, or get paid well for. Well, this is what places like Substack are for, right? If the model isn’t working somewhere else, maybe it can work here. Let me give this a little more thought.
Thank you! I'm trying to do 2) already. I do write features; but they're still mostly based on studies and interviews (easier and faster to do) and less on data and in-person reportage.
To point 3, to mention just one thing I wonder about: person-based grants (to steal an idea from the metascience world) as opposed to project-based "give me money to report this one thing once" grants in journalism that provide consistent funding+training as an on-ramp for journalists to build independent audiences on social platforms. Unless you're already famous or very lucky, it takes a long time to build enough momentum doing independent content. In general, grants intended to help with building something new (a platform, a beat, a skillset, etc.) rather than just executing a single reporting project could maybe help replace some of the stability and risk-taking opportunity lost as more journalists work outside newsrooms.
2020 stopped science. Period.