I remember the mix of confusion, panic and pride I felt when an aspiring science writer first approached me for advice. My postdoc was in a tailspin, and “failure” was the only adjective I could slap on it. Yet here was someone (who knew nothing about my research sphere failure) who’d identified me as being a couple of confident steps down their desired career path, wanting to emulate me. The moral of this story? Your perceived failures can be interpreted by others as success.
Perhaps I can help. Here is the background on a few of my freelance science writing pieces, charting how I went from a portfolio of zero to my first paid feature. Hope it’s useful!
Story 1. Feature Article (Unpaid): Rutgers Daily Targum.
Scenes from Rutgers | Piscataway NJ
To get paid science writing opportunities, you usually have to start with the unpaid kind. My advice: linger at this stage as briefly as possible. Aspiring science writers are often nervous about submitting those first big pitches (100% valid!) so may continue with unpaid writing until they feel more confident.
Yet from what I’ve seen, editors only need 3 clips to support a pitch from a new/unfamiliar writer. You may want a few extra clips you so can mix and match with your pitches, but once you have a portfolio of 3-5 unpaid articles, I think you’re ready to go chase money.
If you have the revelation that you want to pursue science writing while at university (undergrad-PhD-postdoc), then get involved with your student newspaper or a student science magazine. I was a PhD student in my final semester when I volunteered at my primarily-undergrad student paper (Rutgers Daily Targum). For more backstory, check out my WordPlay blog posts (one, two, three).
I wrote 3 feature article that last semester. Two of them came from school press releases the Science Editor spotted; out of the pool of writers I volunteered first. Essentially those features were fleshed-out versions of the press releases, though I spun my own interpretations in there too. I had to interview at least 3 scientists involved with the work, most of whom were used to speaking with student journalists.
The third was an idea I pitched to the Editor. The 2017 Nobel Prizes had just been announced, with the Chemistry Prize awarded to the developers of cryo-electron microscopy. I knew that Rutgers already performed a lot of research with cryo-EM, so my pitch was simply to highlight our research and interview the scientists who did it.
Which brings me to my second main piece of advice: pitch early, pitch often. In the world of freelance science writing the onus is usually on writers to approach editors with ideas. I also realised that these ideas don’t have to be earth-shatteringly novel: you can pitch an interesting idea to a magazine that hasn’t covered the topic before. At the “news” end of science writing it’s more about being the first to pitch a cool discovery, with insider/expert info helping you spot what is “cool”.
Pitching in a low stakes situation (e.g. sending your idea about a local piece of news to your friendly editor at the unpaid student newspaper) helps get get you ready to pitch for higher stakes (e.g. cold-pitching to an editor you’ve never met before who works for a popular national website).
Last thing to note. Editors at paying science magazines don’t (in my experience) denigrate student newspaper clips. Why would they? Many editors got their first clips the same way. Many of the journalistic rules implemented by student publications mirror those in science magazines.
If you want more info on pitching and breaking in to science writing, I’d recommend reading The Open Notebook’s ‘Getting Started in Science Journalism.’ I’ll talk more about that site in a later piece, but check it out in the meantime.
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