Immunology at the crossroads

tell us stories that live in our minds long after we read their words. After 20 years of training some 200 graduate students, I can report some progress in convincing editors that properly trained scientists can do the job of reporting on science for general readers. However—and this is a big however— editors still insist that these scientists must, no matter what their qualification in science, move through some version of the traditional gauntlet of disparate beats at small and medium-sized newspapers before assuming a high-profile science writer position at a national newspaper. No matter how well grounded one is in science, there are no shortcuts to becoming a nationally prominent science reporter. Indeed, all I can say to scientists who are considering science writing as a career is this: succeeding in science journalism is no easier than succeeding in science. One must be called to it, almost as one is called to a religious life. Our students have, in part perhaps for mystical reasons, done well. Nearly all those we have trained have moved into jobs in newspapers, magazines, museums, zoos, aquariums, and news offices in universities and government laboratories. A few have gone into the more specialised fields of technical writing or medical writing. Not a single one, interestingly, has gone back to the laboratory bench.