The Art of the Pitch. Who Wants to Learn?

Communication
Society
Science
(S. Joshua Swamidass) #1

I note that there are several experts here, in several fields, many of whom write their own blogs and enjoy engaging the public.

With a couple of exceptions, I also note that most of us are not publishing in the media. So here is my question. Who here wants to get a primer on how to engage the media, write pitches, etc?

We probably won’t explain much here, but perhaps @Nlents and I will set up a google hangout with the interested to discuss further.

@davecarlson, @art, @evograd, @dga471, @Jordan, @cwhenderson, @pevaquark, @epkruger and any other scientist who is interested.

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(Dave Carlson) #2

I would definitely be interested in this!

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(Elias) #3

Interested!

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(Blogging Graduate Student) #4

Sure.

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(Jordan Mantha) #5

I’d be interested.

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(Nathan H. Lents) #6

This is a good idea. I’ve figured out a few things, but much more to learn.

(Matthew Pevarnik) #7

I’d be up for this.

(S. Joshua Swamidass) #8

That is a good amount of interest. Let’s plan a google hangout discussion on this over the summer. When I have a moment, I’ll propose a few dates, and I might give some pre-reading too.

(Daniel Deen) #9

This interests me for possibly other reasons than pitching to the media. If still available, I’d like to listen in…

(Nathan H. Lents) #10

Hi friends - I have an idea for an article that I’d like to pitch to a Christian outlet about the evolution of human societies. @Philosurfer, it’s about the idea I want to talk about at Crosswise (among other things). Mark Moffet’s new book, the human swarm, is fascinating and I think I have an angle that Christians (and Jews and Muslims, and really all faiths) might find interesting. The gist of it is that the common commandment of “Love the stranger” and this notion of being tolerant of strangers is one of the key things that humans have that other social mammals don’t. Humans can walk into a cafe full of strangers and feel perfectly at ease (as do the others). If a chimp walked into a group of strangers, he would not walk out unharmed. (The reality is that he wouldn’t walk in in the first place.) So, it seems that the evolution of “love the stranger” was a key event in human evolution. This assumes in-group identification, but this is not the thread to get into all those details.

Does anyone know of a Christian magazine or other outlet that may be interested in such evolution-focused convergence of science and faith traditions?

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(Nathan H. Lents) #11

It could even be something that I write together with a Christian, like @swamidass or @Philosurfer or anyone interested.

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(Jordan Mantha) #12

@NLENTS, that’s a very interesting idea. I don’t know that there are a lot of specifically “evolution friendly” Christian magazines out there to know where it might work. They tend to be either against (especially human) evolution or so open that it may not be as much of a “oh wow, I’d never thought of that”. I would love to see something like that in Christianity Today, but I doubt they’re ready for that :slight_smile:

I know this idea would be very relevant to many Christian university students as it uses their “justice” impulses to hook them into a larger “human history” story.

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(S. Joshua Swamidass) #13

I know an editor at CT. It’s worth pitching to them. Want to send me what you got, and I can make the connection?

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