Speaking with members of the media can be intimidating, but can be a valuable exercise that pays dividends for your scientific career, your field’s or institution’s reputation, and WID’s and UW’s public engagement missions. Below are a few tips for engaging with the media that apply to most media opportunities: news, radio, print, video, and more.

1. Be prepared. Select two to four main points you want to highlight and consider rehearsing a few versions of answers to questions you’re likely to encounter. You can even practice with a colleague or friend.
2. Get all the info. You should feel free to ask a reporter questions about the interview. Find out about the focus of the piece, who all you will speak with, the format, etc. It’s okay to ask for more time to prepare, but reporters are always on deadline, so be prompt.
3. Know your audience. Think about talking to a middle school student or your great aunt rather than to your colleagues or students. Avoid jargon, but if you must use a more technical term, make sure to define and explain it. Speak slowly so non-experts can keep up and be ready to stop and explain concepts.
4. Keep it short. Remember your key points and try not to drown them out with too much noise.
5. Remember your expertise. This is a bit of a balancing act: many scientists hesitate to discuss anything outside their very narrow area of research but remember that you are more of an expert in your broad field than almost anyone your audience has spoken with. So, you should feel free to think of your expertise more expansively than you might among colleagues. At the same time, it’s important not to speculate far beyond your knowledge area — it’s okay to say that you don’t know something or that you’re not the right person to answer a question (and if you know who is, consider giving the reporter their name).
6. Hedging is okay, but don’t bury the lede. We always want to represent our science honestly, so include caveats and helpful descriptors when discussing results. But, you also don’t want to minimize the importance of your findings.
7. Corrections are okay. It’s no big deal to ask for a correction. In a live interview, you can correct yourself in real-time — it’s better than letting inaccurate information persist. If it’s recorded, you can ask for another take. Reporters fact-check written stories and make corrections all the time, so don’t be shy.
8. Assume everything you say is “on the record”. Expect to see it in tomorrow’s newspaper. There are pretty limited circumstances where you would speak off the record or on background, and those arrangements are made explicitly. You will almost never get to review the final version of something, but you can ask to review your direct quotes or sections attributed to you (but note that the answer won’t always be “yes”).
9. Be a human. If you’re comfortable doing so, sharing the human side of research can make for a much more compelling story. Share about the research process, your personal or career journey, or just inject some personality into your conversation. Be yourself — it’s important for people to recognize that human beings do science.
10. Ask for help. Your department, college, and university communicators are happy to provide advice, coaching, or anything else you may need.