Episode 72 – Interview with journalist Brian Lin

This week we had the great pleasure of speaking with Brian Lin in Washington DC. Brian oversees EurekAlert!, a non-profit news release distribution platform operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He has more than two decades of experience as a science communicator, having interned at a national daily technology TV show in Canada before serving as a press officer for 13 years at the University of British Columbia, where he helped communicate scientific and medical research while developing and delivering media training for faculty and students. Since joining AAAS in 2014, he has more than tripled web traffic at EurekAlert! and led the development of a new platform that launched in 2021. His current focus is expanding access to EurekAlert! in low and middle-income countries and fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in and through science communication.

You can follow Brian and learn more about his work here:

Transcript

Jen (00:00:22)
Hello everybody. You are in the right place. You have joined us for another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm.
I’m Jen and as always I am joined by my friend and colleague and co-host and all round superstar Michael.
Good morning, Michael.

Michael (00:00:38)
Good morning, Jen. It’s a lot of titles. I’m yeah, pleased to be here and excited for another episode.

Jen (00:00:44)
Yeah, me too. And I’m really excited to introduce you to our guest today, who is Brian Lin. Now, I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting Brian last year when I got to go to a science communication symposium in Venice, pretty nice location for a conference, I’m not complaining.
And so I met Brian there and chatted with him a bit and discovered that he’s been the director of editorial content strategy at EurekAlert! for almost a decade, I think a couple of months off his 10-year anniversary.
And EurekAlert!, I’m sure many of our listeners will be familiar with. But if you’re not, it’s an online news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is also known as AAAS.
If you don’t know anything about AAAS, you would have definitely seen them somewhere out there.It’s the world’s largest general science society. They publish the really highly respected and revered journal Science, along with other excellent journals. I know their annual conference is the largest science conference in the world. I’ve never been, I’m a bit frightened, I think. But Brian, we’re just absolutely rapt that you could make time to join us today from Washington, DC. Welcome.

Brian (00:01:54)
It’s my pleasure.

Michael (00:01:56)
Yeah, it’s great to have you Brian. Heard a lot about EurekAlert!, so it’s great to speak to someone who’s involved with it.

Jen (00:02:04)
So Michael, I don’t actually know how much you’ve interacted with EurekAlert!. We’ll ask you that in a second,but it’s actually a site that I use pretty much every week, which is why I was kind of fangirling Brian, to meet him. Because as Michael knows but Brian probably doesn’t know, part of my weekly routine for almost 20 years now has been finding science stories that I can research and develop into a radio segment.
So Brian, every week I go into a radio studio and have the great fun and pleasure of having a conversation with radio hosts and introducing them to a science topic.
And, you know, sometimes I find stories, they just kind of come across my radar, they’re in my social feeds, or someone will tell me something, or I’ll hear something on another radio station or whatever.
But you know, week in, week out for nearly 20 years, often I have to actively search for stories. I have to go on and Google things and try and find, what am I going to talk about this week?
And EurekAlert! is one of the first places that I look because I can trust it. It’s full of good stories. Yeah, it’s been really, it’s been a great service for me over many years. So thanks, Brian. Thanks for helping people like me with such a great service.

Brian (00:03:12)
You’re so welcome. I mean, it’s such a nice thing to hear. If your audience could see me, they would see, you know, me smiling from ear to ear.
And I can’t wait to tell my colleagues about this because EurekAlert! has been around since 1996. So we are, you know, well into our 20s.
And we started out as I think a bit of a niche project, a niche website where you know, if you’re a science journalist or a science communicator, you probably knew about EurekAlert! as a sort of a central platform where publishers and academic institutions or you know, I call them science producers, anybody who produces science, puts their news releases on the platform, first and foremost for journalists to take a look and you know, hopefully report on them.
But because we are part of a non profit scientific society, we make all of our news releases available to the public for free as well. And so over the years, it’s just become a place where people happen upon scientific information that are produced by universities or publishers or funding agencies.
And they’re typically written in, you know, fairly lay friendly terms. They typically have pretty, hopefully engaging images and multimedia. Certainly in the past 10 years, we’re seeing more and more of those sort of news releases.
And so it’s had a, I would say, a nice spinoff benefit to the public as a place to find good science and well-communicated science.

Jen (00:04:39)
Yeah, and I think that’s a really important point because the alerts are written in a very accessible way that even if I’m reading up in a field that I don’t know very much about, I can understand pretty quickly why this matters, what’s the new finding, what’s the context here.
But the key thing is that it’ll always link me back to whatever the primary source is. So you know, if it’s a new paper or if it’s a press release or you know, whatever it is, I can get to the actual science. Which is really important for me because I’m always wanting to make sure that anything I talk about that I’m absolutely accurate, I’m not relying on a second or third hand telling of the story.
So I do want us to talk a lot more about EurekAlert! and kind of how it operates.
But Brian, normally we start our interviews by asking our guests, you know, what happened to you in your childhood that you became a science nerd? What got you into science?
And for you, you know, it’s a slightly different question because your training isn’t in science. Your training is in journalism. So you’ve got a master’s degree in journalism from the University of British Columbia.
Before that, a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from Taiwan National University. So as you can tell, I’ve been stalking you on LinkedIn and looking at all the roles that you’ve been doing.
And from what I could tell, the first time STEM appeared in your career journey was when you were an intern at the Digital Desk at CTV Vancouver.
So I’m really interested to hear, how did you go from English language and literature in Taiwan to being a science journalist? And are you actually a science nerd from way back or was it a job that kind of made you go, “Ooh, actually science is cool.”

Brian (00:06:14)
I’ll take the science nerd title and wear it very proudly.

Jen (00:06:20)
Good. It’s a compliment.

Brian (00:06:22)
But no, I did not start out liking science, actually. As you mentioned, I grew up in Taiwan in a lower middle-class family. My dad was a truck driver, my mom was a tailor.
And so, you know, like most Taiwanese families, education was very important. And so you know, I was infused with the idea very early on that I wanted to be a doctor. That I wanted, that was what I desire the most in life. And so that had always been kind of just what I you know, expected that I would be.
Now in Taiwan, you actually have to pick a major in high school. And of course I chose pre-med, which meant that, you know, in addition to the typical arts classes, I also had to take physics and math and biology and chemistry. And I realized at that point that I was not good at any of those things.
Which was maybe a surprise to my parents. And I actually felt really inadequate because a lot of these subjects, you know, these concepts, physics concepts and chemistry concepts just seemed to make sense to most of my classmates who were in pre-med.
They were reading, I remember they used to read this magazine called Newton Magazine. I don’t know if it was an import or it was sort of you know, a Taiwanese born science magazine. But it was passed around, you know, in the classroom and everybody read it.
And I just, I wasn’t interested in it at all. And I couldn’t grasp any of the concepts. And so it got to a point where I was doing so poorly that I was held back an extra year and had to transfer from pre-med to humanities.
During which time I kind of blossomed because I was, you know, in some way free from the shackles of science and math and I no longer needed to take those classes and I was able to read and write as I liked.
And that’s how I got into English literature in undergrad. And if you thought that I would be sort of free from science for the rest of my life, you would be wrong. Because after…

Jen (00:08:34)
What a story.

Brian (00:08:34)
Yeah. So during grad school, I had the opportunity to intern at a local community television station. They had an LGBT magazine show.
And so a friend of mine was volunteering there and he said, “Oh, you’re going to journalism school. You must know how to write. Why don’t you come and work on scripts with us?” And so I started doing that. And it was because of that TV experience that got me the internship at CTV because I had exposure to television.
And it turned out, it just happened to be a daily technology show. It was a two minute segment on national TV. And you know, we did everything from talking about the start of the internet. You know, Netscape browsers. We got to review that. I got to play with the first iPod that came out.
I played with the first person shooting game called Call of Duty, I think. And I never played a video game before. So I [had] to spend a week playing, learning this video game.
And that was how I ended up, once I became a press officer at UBC, that I was sort of funneled into the science [beat]. It was because I had that technology experience.
So it was not anything that I had planned or been educated for. In fact, some might say that I was extremely unprepared for a life in science communication.
But I saw my predecessor who did the job and you know, she always seemed to be having so much fun talking to scientists. And I thought, well, I can do that. And that’s, you know, where I ended up.

Jen (00:10:10)
I just love it.

Michael (00:10:12)
Yeah, that’s fascinating. So you know, you were freed from the shackles of science and maths and then somehow you kind of found your way back there. Did you, like how did you feel about that? I mean, did you find that you eventually learned to love the topic?

Brian (00:10:30)
Absolutely, absolutely. I think that it would be fair to say that I was pretty intimidated at first ’cause you’re not only, you know, talking to scientists. You’re also talking to very smart scientists, right?
These are, you know, these are professors. You know, they have won awards. You know, they’re doing really really smart projects. And so it took a while for me to feel comfortable having a conversation with them.
But I think at the end of the day it’s probably my curiosity that saved me. And I think in part also because of that journalism training, I wasn’t afraid to ask stupid questions.
And so, you know, I would go into a room and just really question, I guess, some of the foundations of what I didn’t understand. And I think that, you know, most of the times the scientists really appreciated a different perspective.
I like to make analogies. So I would come up with fun analogies to sort of, first of all, help me understand it and then potentially help our audience understand it.
And, you know, I’ve had scientists say, “You know, I’ve never looked at it that way, but that’s a really interesting way of looking at it.”
And it’s sort of that back and forth of workshopping your analogies that sometimes you connect with.

Michael (00:11:47)
That’s great. I think that’s really great advice.
It really resonates with me what you’re saying there about feeling a little bit intimidated, but then connecting through curiosity.
Because I think even you know, when scientists talk to each other, they feel like that. When I was a student, or even now when I’m talking to other scientists and they’re an expert in an area and they know a lot of stuff that I don’t know, it can feel a little bit intimidating.
But connecting through curiosity, I think is a great way to approach it.

Jen (00:12:13)
So Brian, like curiosity I can see has played a really important role in what you do. And the ability to ask questions I think is really essential.
But I’m trying to understand now what your actual role at EurekAlert! is. So if people, you know, go and have a look at EurekAlert!, they’ll see a great webpage with just a ton of stories.
You know, you click on the story, you can go and read more. You can find the primary literature link, all of that stuff we said before.
But what does the director of editorial content strategy mean? And what role are you playing in this whole endeavour of EurekAlert!?
And I’m really interested also, in addition to curiosity, what are the key skills that you brought to this role? Because you’ve done a lot of other roles before you joined AAAS.

Brian (00:12:58)
Sure. Well, I mean, you know, I think if your visitors went to EurekAlert!, they’ll see something that looks and sounds like a news website.
So that is one thing that we try to clearly communicate is that these are source materials that universities and funding agencies and publishers use to communicate the work that they do.
And, you know, the primary purpose of a news release is, I always think of it as an invitation. You know, it’s like you send out an invitation for somebody to come to your party and then you can talk to them. You can, you know, entertain them.
And so the primary goal of a news release traditionally is to get journalists interested in a particular subject area and hopefully learn more, interact with the newsmakers, in this case it will be scientists or authors, and then report on it independently and put the stories in their publications that hopefully reach a much larger audience.
A big part of my job is to make sure that we have great content, that we have diverse sources, that we do our best to represent the diversity and differences in scientists in the scientific enterprise.
Right now, roughly 50% of our content comes from the US, another 10 to 15% comes from the, from Europe. And that is not surprising considering, you know, where a lot of science is produced, English is spoken as a first language and just the history and depth of science communication as a profession.
But we’re trying to work with organisations in other parts of the world to try and encourage them to use EurekAlert! as a platform to showcase the science that they’re doing.
So this is why, you know, I traveled to Venice for that conference and it’s why I traveled to places like, I was in India in January, I was in Latin America and Africa last year to try and encourage more organizations to share their content on EurekAlert!.
Because at the end of the day, EurekAlert! only works for those universities that submit content if the content is being looked at, first by journalists and by members of the public.
Journalists and the public aren’t going to be looking at our stuff unless they find something interesting regularly.
And so that’s why content is in my title ’cause at the end of the day, it all goes back to having diverse sources of content, having good news releases that talk about various advances in science.

Michael (00:15:32)
Hmm, yeah. I think it’s such an important role that you have because EurekAlert!, I guess is part of you know, a broader ecosystem.
Like it’s a really important function in terms of getting science news out there to the public and educating the public about science, but also educating policymakers as well. You know, ultimately they’re going to be influenced by this science that’s coming out.
And I know you’re based in the US and that it’s an election year at the moment. I’m just curious to get your thoughts on how you think the political situation can influence public perceptions of science and policy decisions. And you know, what that means for the future of science in the United States.

Brian (00:16:13)
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it’s been clear both here at home and abroad that American politics is very partisan and you know, the American public can oftentimes feel very divided.
But I think one thing that the science has to offer is this idea of this methodology as looking at the evidence and not having preconceived notions of landing on one side or the other.
And I think that when you come down to the individual level, when you talk to people face-to-face or when you, you know, you work with them in smaller groups, I think most people can support the methodology and the efforts the scientists put into finding answers.
I think where it could become really challenging, and this is both in terms of science being produced and science being communicated is that most people don’t necessarily understand the scientific process as well as scientists take it for granted.
You know, I’ll give you a really obvious example. You know, when we were at UBC, we oftentimes get papers that will say, “Green tea is good for you” or “Red wine is good for you”. And then you know, three days later, you get another paper that says the exact opposite, right?
And so when scientists communicate these types of studies, oftentimes they might focus on the bottom line. This is what our studies found.
But from the recipient, from the audience perspective, what they’re hearing is conflicting ideas that seem to be coming from extremely credible people. And that could be extremely confusing.
And so I think that when science is filtered through media, oftentimes some information gets left out because there’s not enough space.
Because you know, if you have 15 seconds on the radio or 30 seconds on television, there’s stuff that they have to leave out. That’s just part of the industry.
And I think why we have a great opportunity today is that mainstream media isn’t the only place that people find information. In fact, it’s not the primary place that people find it.

Jen (00:18:36)
No, not anymore.

Brian (00:18:45)
Exactly. And so I think that it is both an opportunity and an obligation I think, for those of us who have a platform, you know, whether it’s EurekAlert! where I happen to work or you know, on your Facebook, where you share stories. Or at the dinner table, when you talk to your family, is to try and infuse more of the context rather than just you know, the bottom line result.
‘Cause I think a lot of times that’s where you make connections. That’s when you can actually talk about how did you come up with that answer? What’s the process of getting there? And that process is what builds trust.
And so I think that a lot of times trust doesn’t get built because we’re just focusing on the headlines. When we have the opportunity to actually talk about you know, “This is the process. This is how it was, you know,
how the information was filtered down.” There’s more opportunities for back and forth and more opportunity for trust to be built.

Jen (00:19:38)
And I think what you just said before, Brian, about you know, it’s both an opportunity and an obligation for anyone with the opportunity to share science.
I think that’s something that really resonates with Michael and I, because that’s kind of what we’re always trying to share with, you know. So our day jobs are teaching science students at a university how to communicate effectively with different audiences.
And we’re kind of always trying to present it in that dual way of here’s this exciting opportunity to do all these wonderful things.
But equally, it’s also actually kind of an obligation because at least in Australia, most science is publicly funded. And so therefore we need to make sure that the people who funded it can find out what did we do? What does it mean? What are the implications of this research? So, yeah, it really resonates with me.
And I guess I can’t resist asking you a question before we run out of time which is along the lines of, you know, you’ve been in this gig for a long time now. You’ve been working specifically in science journalism for a long time, both at the University of British Columbia and at AAAS.
And you know, as we explained to you, we made this podcast to support scientists and science students to develop their own communication skills.
You’ve got to tell us, what are some of the things you’ve learned in your career about how we can make science accessible, engaging, interesting to different audiences? What are some of your kind of top messages about science communication?

Brian (00:21:00)
I would say the number one question we all should ask ourselves when we’re communicating on any topic is why? You know, why do we, why do you want to communicate this piece of information?
Because without doing that, you could focus too much on the message and not all the other things that makes the message effective.
So I always encourage folks to think about, answer the question “why” first? Do you want to communicate this piece of information because you want to raise awareness? Because you want a call to action? Because you want to increase funding? Because you want to make money? Because you want, you know, why do you want to do this?
And from that answer, you can then determine which audience is going to help you achieve that most effectively. If you [want] policy change, maybe your priority audience should be policymakers. If you want to make money, maybe your audience could be entrepreneurs and startup companies.
So depending on what your goals are, your audience may be completely different. And based on that audience, your channels and messages could be you know, hundreds of miles apart.
And so I think that oftentimes when folks think about communication, they can be crippled by the idea of talking to everybody about everything.

Jen (00:23:23)
Yeah, yes.

Brian (00:23:25)
Whereas you know, I think that the biggest lessons I’ve learned was… Because my old job used to be media relations. So our audience primarily were journalists to begin with.
And so it really helped me understand that no matter what I do, I had to first focus on what do journalists want? What information is going to get them intrigued? And, ’cause ultimately they want their audience to be interested in this piece of information.
So even amongst journalists, you know, local journalists would be interested in a different aspect of a national journalist compared to an international journalist.
And so that really helped me look at different audiences with really clear eyes and say, you can’t have a one size fits all approach to communication. And that’s not just for science communication, right?
Like, you know, if you’ve got to have a really hard conversation with members of your family, you will probably come up with different key messages.
You’ll probably find different ways to talk to them. Or different venues, right? Like you might have to [talk to] some of them by taking them out for a walk. Some of them you might have a coffee with them. Some may require some alcohol. So, you know, we all have that innate sense of the best way to talk to our audiences. But, I think…

Michael (00:23:47)
Yeah, I can see your ability to create analogies Brian is sneaking in here.

Brian (00:23:55)
Yeah, but I think that the number one thing is you’ve got to not only care about what you’re doing, but the people that you’re trying to communicate to.
Because we go through a lot of trouble to come up with all those different ways of communicating with our loved ones because we care about them.
And so without caring about your audience, you might not want to spend a whole lot of time customizing messages.
That’s why I say, you know, we start with the why, then figure out who’s going to help you get there. And then based on that audience, you can customize your messages and your channel to make it as effective as possible.

Michael (00:24:31)
It’s really good advice ’cause I think the why is a step that can easily be skipped. You know, it’s just kind of automatic to go straight to the message.
And we are nearing the end of the podcast. And a step that we never skip is the last section.

Jen (00:24:48)
That segue was gold, Michael. Just gold.

Michael (00:24:50)
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And we’re going to move to the section now where we want to ask you a few lighthearted questions, Brian, just to to round out the interview. Are you ready?

Brian (00:25:04)
Sure.

Michael (00:25:15)
OK. So first question I’d like to ask is if you could pick an alternative job to what you’re doing today, what would it be?

Brian (00:25:23)
I would like to be a director for films or movies.

Jen (00:25:29)
There you go. Not a doctor. I’ve taken that, taken that very clearly. Excellent.

Michael (00:25:35)
Let us know, Brian, when that, when you do direct your first movie.
Let us know, ’cause I would love to watch it.

Brian (00:25:41)
That’s good.

Jen (00:25:41)
Yeah, absolutely. This second question maybe would help with the first.
Brian, if you could choose one superpower, what would you pick?

Brian (00:25:50)
Oh gosh, 🎵 if I could turn back time 🎵.

Michael (00:25:59)
Yeah, great.

Brian (00:26:00)
That would be good. I mean, I like to be able to turn back time. I mean, there’s things that I think I would have liked to do. I would love to, you know, tell myself not to be so scared to try different things, yeah. More opportunities.

Jen (00:26:14)
Who doesn’t want a Time Turner, right?

Michael (00:26:16)
Yeah, you could.
I’d probably use it for reasons like have Christmas dinner, turn back time, have Christmas dinner again.
Oh no, that’d be a waste of the power, wouldn’t it?
Okay, so that really segues nicely to the next question.
So you’ve got your superpower. You can turn back time.
Let’s say you go back to when you were 21 and let’s just say you’re able to somehow give yourself a message. At the age of 21, what would you say to yourself?

Brian (00:26:46)
Try everything.

Michael (00:26:48)
Hmm. Just…

Jen (00:26:50)
Can’t believe you didn’t just sing that just then.

Michael (00:26:52)
Yeah.

Brian (00:26:54)
Is there a song that starts with that or?

Jen (00:26:58)
Surely there must be.

Brian (00:26:58)
Try. Yeah, try everything.

Michael (00:27:01)
Yep, great.

Jen (00:27:02)
Yeah, I love it. I wanna go back with you. I think that sounds like fun.
Next question Brian. What do you think makes a good leader?

Brian (00:27:11)
Listening.

Michael (00:27:12)
Yeah.

Jen (00:27:12)
As we all listen to your every word. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely.
Brian, I’m just absolutely rapt that I had the opportunity to meet you last year and that you were so generous when this random Australian came up to you and said, “Hey, Brian, you do this really cool job and I would really really love to chat with you on a podcast that we run in Australia.” And instead of you saying, “Oh, come off it. I don’t have time for that. I’m a busy and important person.” You said, “Sure, Jen, absolutely no problem.”
So thank you for having been so generous in sharing your experiences and your wisdom and for saying yes to coming on the podcast.
I’ve just learned a lot from you and I have absolutely no doubt that our listeners will have as well.
So massive thanks and I hope one day I can head over and visit you in Washington D.C. and see the inner workings of EurekAlert!, this website that I’ve been frequenting for so many years.

Brian (00:28:04)
Sounds great. And you know, it was a pleasure meeting you.
And I would have said anything with that when it was asked with an Australian accent, so ask away!

Jen (00:28:18)
I didn’t tell you that you’d be speaking with a co-host who had an Irish accent.
So you got two great accents for the price of one.

Brian (00:28:25)
Exactly.

Michael (00:28:26)
Yeah, that’s the whole reason I’m here Brian, is for the Australian accents.
But it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thanks so much.

Jen (00:28:55)
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of “Let’s Talk SciComm” from the University of Melbourne Science Communication Teaching Team. I’m Associate Professor Jen Martin and my brilliant cohost is Dr. Michael Wheeler.

Michael (00:29:09)
And if you’ve enjoyed listening to this episode, we’d love you to share it with your friends and family. We’d love you to share your favourite episode online. And you can find us at Let’s Talk SciComm on X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Jen (00:29:23)
And this season, we are asking for your help to spread the word so that more people find out about our podcast. So if you enjoy listening, we would love you to tell a friend.
But we’d also love you to think about taking a couple of minutes to write us a review. Whatever platform you listen on, there will be a place for you to leave a review and we are gonna keep track and award our favourite reviewees some prizes.
We’re thinking about some merch and we’d also love to reward our favourite review with a free science communication workshop that we will run for you in person or online, depending on whereabouts you are.

Michael (00:29:58)
Ooh, prizes. And if… They sound great. And if you’d like to get in touch to suggest a guest or a future topic, we’d love to hear from you.
Please email us at lets.talk.scicomm@gmail.com.
And as always, a huge thank you to our production team, Stephanie Wong and Steven Tang.