The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists

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often, it would be in vain, because the expert wouldn’t be found or wouldn’t be
available for comment.
Nowadays, e-mail and the Web have completely transformed this relationship.
Names and contacts of experts are much more easily found, sources are much
more available, as they are checking their e-mail everyday, even when they are
out of their offices.

You can quickly find, for instance, the addresses of experts before
you go to the field. [Interview 1]

One important advantage is that if I want to get into contact with
someone in Finland, or even in the United States or India, it is very
easy through the Internet. (…) I go to the Internet and I can find the
contact information quite easily and send an e-mail. [Interview 8]

Sending e-mail to sources is now a very common procedure among European
science journalists, who see this form of contact as a way of increasing the
probability of success. The journalists know that scientists are sometimes more
willing to answer some questions by e-mail, instead of talking directly to
members of the press. Some interviewees mentioned e-mail interviews and the use
they make of them on a daily basis.
From the interviews conducted with these journalists, the dependency of these
professionals from peer-reviewed scientific journals is more evident. In all the
interviews, even without being asked directly about them, journalists talk about
peer-reviewed journals and how Internet has made them more available. For
example, typical comments were:

All the articles of all the journals we need are on the Internet, all the
researchers. You can find the names of researchers who work in
articles that you are writing about. [Interview 5]

You can read journals or papers and find a lot of reports that were
almost impossible before. [Interview 12]

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In the survey, we had already asked European science journalists what were their
main sources of information on the Web. Eurekalert, the website for the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, came first, followed by some
prominent scientific journals and other science publications. In the interviews,
some of these sites were mentioned again by journalists, while answering very
diverse questions, as an example of what they do on a daily basis.

I follow certain pages: for instance, the BBC, some Finnish pages,
New Scientist, so you get a good picture of what is going. [Interview
6]

You must remember that those big journals, like Science, Nature,
The Lancet, whatever, have self-interest. [Interview 3]

In their interviews with American science journalists, Dumlao and Duke (2003)
came to the conclusion that e-mail and the Web were ‘speeding’ information, ‘in
ways that were benefiting their work and the dissemination of information’. From
our own interviews, we could understand that European science journalists see the
fast access to information as essential to their daily routines. In response to the
question ‘What are the main advantages of Internet in your work as a science
journalist?’, interviewee 4 simply answered: ‘Certainly, the speed. And the
amount of information you get.’
The speed of access to sources of information all over the world interests science
journalists because science is a global activity and also because their work is now
compared with the work of other science journalists in newspapers in other
continents. It is not enough to get a commentary from national experts – although
it is important to have it –, it is essential to contact directly with the author of the
peer-reviewed article and international experts on the field. The Internet brought
to science journalists this opportunity to write about science in a global scale. To
compare their work with what the best publications in the world do. And this fact
certainly increases the pressure to write about the same issues big media are
writing about.

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Some of the interviewees also mentioned fact-checking as an important task that
could be more easily done with the Internet. Instead of having hundreds of books
in the newsroom, or contacting experts in the field, science journalists (and
journalists in general) have now access to thousand of sources on the Internet
where they can check for facts and information.

The latest figures are always up to date and it is very easy to get
them while you are writing an article. [Interview 1]

You can very easily collect information. And then you can check
from different sources if the information is correct. [Interview 6]

The amount of information Internet has brought into newsrooms has also some
disadvantages, as some of the interviewees have pointed out. The main problem
European science journalists identify while dealing with the Web is the credibility
of the information they find, not always evident after making a query on Google.

I don’t really know if the information is reliable and sometimes you
can find so many interesting sites that you just don’t know where to
begin. [Interview 1]

The biggest drawback [of Internet] is often the lack of ways of
verifying the quality of this information. [Interview 2]

You cannot prove that everything you find is true. Everyone is aware
of that disadvantage. [Interview 5]

You cannot always be sure that the information is correct, especially
on issues on which there are only one or two sources. I usually do
cross-checking. [Interview 6]

The credibility of the information found on the Web was cited by many of the
interviewees as a problem they have to deal with on a daily basis. Because the
Internet allows them to get many more references than they would get in a library,
for instance, science journalists spend some of their working time checking and

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cross-checking that information, so they can avoid mistakes while writing their
articles.
But before checking the information, journalists have to perform another task that,
according to the interviewees, is even more time-consuming: choosing the issues
they will write about from dozens of press releases, reports and scientific journals,
available on the Internet or already delivered by e-mail into their inboxes.
Some years ago, science journalists were receiving stories from personal contacts
and news agencies, through normal mail and faxes. Nowadays, the quantity of
information on the Internet is overwhelming. Literally thousands of sites all over
the world can be visited by science journalists looking for stories for tomorrow’s
newspaper. And that is a problem:

[Internet] has given us more time pressures. If you work in a daily
paper, it’s the time pressure and it’s too much information. Everyday
you get information about, I don’t know, 1500 reports that you can
write something about. You have to read it and decide what to do
about it, It is too much. [Interview 3]

You can be lost in all the information you find. [Interview 5]

Dumlao and Duke (2003) came to the same conclusions while interviewing
American science journalists: there is an excess of information on the Web and
science journalists spend too much time dealing with it. At the same time, some of
the interviewees of that research project also complained about the increased time
pressure Internet has brought into newsrooms.
European science journalists also feel this pressure, increased by the amount of
information available everyday at a very short distance, sometimes a simple click.
This pressure on science journalists makes them visit the most important websites
everyday, looking for press releases from main scientific institutions and journals,
in order to find reliable information they can write about.

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In order to find new and trustful information, journalists have to visit many more
sites and spend many hours checking what they get. This is not something they
can do everyday, and so, as we have seen in the previous chapter, European
science journalists tend to stick with the same sites, where they know they can
find interesting information, on a daily basis, without having to worry about its
credibility.

You can find new information [with the Internet]. But maybe you
don’t have time to do this, because it is new information everyday
and you feel pack pressure. [Interview 3]

Summarizing, in what concerns the Internet as a tool, one can say that European
science journalists are using it extensively in every newsroom, mainly because it
is a way of getting information fast: not only documents or journals, but also the
contacts of experts, reference materials and even visuals. In their daily work, these
journalists are constantly searching for information on the Internet and experience
trouble when they are not connected.

I use the Internet for e-mail, then to look for contacts, the third is to
look for information, like Google. It is faster, easier. [Interview 2]

One of the disadvantages is that Internet is not always working. It
works 99.9 percent of the time, but sometimes there are technical
problems. [Interview 8]

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5.2. The Internet and the daily routines of European science journalists

The Internet is affecting science journalism all over European newsrooms, as
science journalists feel more pressure to keep up with the loads of information
coming from the Web every hour of the day. From the interviews conducted for
this project, it is clear that European science journalists are well aware of the
transformations the Web is bringing to science communication.
First of all, European science journalists feel that the Internet is now part of their
daily routines and they use it so often they almost forget about it:

It has made our work easier and more comfortable, especially
because you can get information very quickly. [Interview 6]

It is a normal thing now. You have a name and you want to know
more about the curriculum of that person, you find it on the Internet.
You have an article, you can search it on the Internet. You want to
know more about a university, or a department, or a lab, you can find
it on the Internet. Or even in very small things like what’s the
meaning of this specific science, you can find it on the Internet. It is
a common instrument now. [Interview 5]

Because the interviews were conducted more than one year after the survey, we
asked science journalists if they were using the Internet more or less than one year
before. Ten of them said they were using it more often, and only two said they
were using it as often as one year before. This shows that, as we write, the use of
Internet for newsgathering among European science journalists must be higher
than it was when the interviews were conducted.
Science journalists acknowledge this dependency from the Internet and cannot
imagine themselves working without it:

I don’t think I could work without the Internet, because a lot of the
latest news is distributed through the Internet. If you wait until you

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have a paper, a real concrete paper on your desk then you are much
too late. Because of the speed, you can’t do it anymore. [Interview 1]

Because 99 percent of the communication of science is made
through the Internet or e-mail, you cannot avoid it. It is not possible
to do science journalism without it anymore. [Interview 4]

For me, it would be more or less impossible to work without it. I
have some contacts, but for every new subject I have to find out
contacts, and without the Internet that would be impossible.
[Interview 6]

Nowadays it is impossible to work without [the] Internet. [Interview
11]

Some journalists are not so radical, but they admit it would be much more
difficult to work without access to the Internet:

It would be very hard [to work without the Internet]. To check for
information, for instance. [Interview 3]

It might be possible, if we worked in a specialized magazine, like
New Scientist, because they have many, many journalists working
there. They have good contacts all over the world, they have their
phone number and everything. I am working more or less alone.
[Interview 6]

Today, the Internet is so deeply interwoven with the routines of European science
journalists, that some of the interviewees cannot remember how reporting was
done before this tool became widely available.

I think we don’t understand the ways it has changed our way of
doing journalism, but it has. (…) We can’t remember how it was
before the Internet. [Interview 5]

The tranformations that the Internet has brought to science journalism in
European newsrooms are recognized by all interviewees, who talk about the
velocity of the information as the most important factor for the change.

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[Internet] is a big challenge because it has not only messed with
science journalism but with all journalism. Internet has made the
correction of information very easy and you can get a lot of
information very quickly. [Interview 6]

As we have seen in the previous sub-chapter, European science journalists say
they now spend a few hours handling their e-mail and going through the
enormous quantity of science information available on the Web. This task
consumes a lot of their time and is certainly a major daily concern.
When asked about the changes the Internet has brought to science journalism,
most of the interviewees talk about the speed and the easiness of access to
previously unreachable research, mainly scientific journals. A few also mention
the contacts with distant universities, or research centers and their scientists, as a
major advantage of the Web.
Nevertheless, European science journalists are also aware of the problems the
Internet brings to science journalism in general. The focus on more international
science is clear for these professionals. At the same time, European science
journalists admit they are relying more on information coming from scientific
journals and that this is one of the most important changes the Internet introduced
in their routines. As we have seen in chapter 2, before the Internet explosion, daily
newspapers and news agencies all over the world were also writing about peerreviewed
scientific journals and their press releases, but they seemed to depend
less on this kind of information subsidies.
Since 1995, with the spread of the Internet inside newsrooms, European science
journalists began using it extensively to the point they cannot live without it
anymore. As a tool that was already widely available to scientists, the Internet
quickly became a privileged way of making contact with the main sources of
science journalists, who saw it as a way for easily entering a world they wanted to
follow and portray. At the same time, scientists and science publications saw this
tool as a very important way of reaching the media, and consequently research
funds.

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Euopean science journalists know that the Internet is making them write more
about peer-reviewed journals. Two comments on this subject:

Our job is more focused now on the big scientific journals… the
embargo system. It is more evidence-based than it was before,
because of this peer-reviewed system. [Interview 10]

I now write more about the journals. [Interview 8]

A few of the interviewees say that they feel the need to follow the pack and write
about articles in scientific journals, instead of doing their own articles about the
work of scientists. Because of the pressure they feel from management, and also
because the lack of resources, European science journalists are not leaving their
desks to visit laboratories or go to conferences. And they see it as a direct
consequence of the Internet:

You get stuck to the reports you get on the Internet. I sit down and I
can take three or four hours to read all the reports and to decide what
to do about them. I could have done other things if I wasn’t doing
that… [Interview 3]

You are stuck in the office. (…) Instead of going out, meeting
scientists, go to conferences and see the reality. [Interview 7]

The isolation from ‘reality’ seems to bother some of the interviewees for this
project. ‘Reality’ means, for this purpose, the laboratories and conferences where
journalists can normally find scientists doing their work. Instead of visiting those
places, journalists feel prisoners of their newsrooms, always checking for the
latest information on the Web.
Of course, this lack of contact with ‘reality’ is not caused solely by the Internet.
Economic constraints, understaffing of newsrooms and time restrictions are also
responsible for the feeling of isolation among European science journalists. The
Web, and the organization of sources around this new technology, enhanced the
importance of peer-reviewed scientific journals, making them easily available to
every science journalists, no matter in which country he is working from. And

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when you have access to same publications and reports that your competition also
has, why losing time looking for something different?