Scientists often struggle to communicate their work to journalists and the general public, while journalists commonly lack a good understanding of conservation science and associated issues. To help bridge this gap, we're proposing a training session for scientists on how to communicate with the media. Topics covered would include:





Writing to your target audience

Identifying compelling stories

Choosing visuals

Reaching out to journalists

Making it easy for journalists to cover your work

Navigating social media

Managing uncertainty inherent to science

Considering ethics of storytelling

Understanding journalism and impact





A more ambitious scope would be a workshop that would include a component where the audience is broken into small groups where individuals would have opportunities to “pitch” their work directly to a journalist. Each interested participant would be given one minute to apply the lesson they just received to explain to a journalist why their research/work warrants press coverage. The journalist would then have one or two minutes to provide feedback and there would be one or two minutes for discussion. This format would require four to six minutes per participant so if we allocated 30 minutes for interaction, we could accommodate 5-7 scientists per journalist.



To facilitate this activity, Mongabay Africa could bring a larger contingent to ATBC, perhaps up to several journalists. This group, plus local Rwandan journalists, could enable a large number of “pitches” from ATBC scientists.