How do you make readers get to the end of long articles? What are the pitfalls that lie in the way of people moving from writing short news stories to longer features? Do you ever feel like structuring long articles is a nightmarish hell that leaves you alone and weeping under your desk? In this session, Ed Yong and Helen Pearson will take you by the hand and bring you out of the Features Dark Place. Just remember, you’re not alone, we’re all in this together.
Producer and moderator: Alok Jha, Science correspondent of the Guardian
Speakers:
Ed Yong, Freelance science journalist
Helen Pearson, Chief features editor at Nature
Alok Jha is a science correspondent at the Guardian newspaper. As well as writing news and comment, he presents the Science Weekly podcast and is the author of two popular science books. He also regularly presents science programmes on BBC TV and radio.
Ed Yong is an award-winning science writer. His blog Not Exactly Rocket Science is hosted by National Geographic, and his work has also appeared in Nature, the BBC, New Scientist, Wired, the Guardian, and more. He lives in London with his wife.
Helene Pearson commissions, edits and oversees the features section for Nature magazine. She has been writing for Nature for more than a decade and her stories have won accolades including the Wistar Institute Science Journalism Award and the best feature award from the Association of British Science Writers. Helen has a degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, a PhD in genetics and spent eight of her years with Nature in New York. Her book Lessons of a Lifetime — about a series of studies tracking the lives of over 70,000 people — will be published by Penguin in 2015.
