Write About What Is Important, Not About What Is Timely
The Counterintuitive Power of Positivity, Importance, and Depth
To journalists, stories are like freshly prepared french fries. The sooner you consume them, the better. And after a mere day, they are just soggy monstrosities that nobody wants to touch anymore. Stories need to be timely, fresh scoops immediately following major events. In fact, even if the topic itself is timeless, you still need to have a timely hook or story lead to persuade readers to part with their precious time. Stories need to be relevant to the lives of readers, because why should they care if their personal life is not affected by the story? These are just two of the rules of thumb handed down by generations of journalists. Yet these rules, and many others along these lines, are not only empirically flawed but also fundamentally immoral.
As a scientist, I find rules of thumb inherently untrustworthy, especially if they are initially derived from mere personal experience and, at some point, ossified into dogma. Take one of those adages, that negative news sell better than positive news. If it bleeds, it leads. This is one of those no-brainers, where everyone will nod sagely, possibly bemoaning that this compels them to report on negative events to stay competitive. In accordance with this, the tone of the news has become more and more morose over time. Yet outlets such as The Guardian have shown that it does not have to be that way; that upbeat, positive stories can perform just as well as negative news. People like to be uplifted, incidentally showcased by the popularity of Hollywood movies with happy endings, so in hindsight this might not be such a dramatic revelation. But that is crucial. Wisdom in the form of soundbites always seems perspicuous, which is why critical evaluation is so necessary.
Recent research found that pieces written by scientists are just as successful as those written by science journalists. So it seems almost like people who write a lot become good at writing, especially if they freely decide to write for a broader audience. Again, not very surprising in hindsight. It does, however, fly in the face of common wisdom, in which journalists come to the rescue of the obfuscating, overcomplicating researcher who does not pay much attention to making their subject relevant to the reader. A partial explanation for this conundrum could be that reader aptitude or education is systematically underestimated. This gap in aptitude and inclination is supported by the otherwise inexplicable presence of highly complex — and at least in part technical — books on the New York Times bestseller lists, selling millions of copies each. Readers are neither dumb nor only interested in scandals and sex. An increasing proportion of these books are written by scientists, such as physicists, biologists, or machine learning researchers, writing about their respective fields of research. In his book The Third Culture, John Brockman noted a new breed of researchers replacing the traditional class of philosophers as public intellectuals and authors of widely read books, indicating a shift in public interest. As to reader aptitude, James Flynn, the originator of the eponymous Flynn effect, discovered that average IQ rises as a society becomes more and more abstract. All this together implies that a large base of readers is not only capable of digesting complex information, they are craving for it.
The extreme end of in-depth science journalism certainly encompasses Quanta Magazine. Incredibly long articles, incredibly technical articles, and articles which are not tethered to particularly recent events, unafraid to delve deep into concepts. Yet Quanta Magazine is popular and widely read. The argument that most contemporary reporting is current event-focused is analogous to researchers flocking to ‘hot topics,’ an unfortunate circumstance at best, yet certainly nothing to aspire to in an ideal system. I firmly believe it to be paramount that we are able to write about topics which are inherently important, not merely temporally and temporarily convenient. In fact, the latter could even be seen as manipulative and exploitative. This is another facet in which you can observe the derogatory attitude, exhibited by many media outlets, toward readers who are thought to be oblivious to these practices. Today, traditional media seem to resort more and more to providing annotation and context to happenings on social media etc., rather than delivering original content themselves. This incentivizes them even more to capitalize on current events as leads for articles. Not because they are of intrinsic importance but rather because they aim to monetize some of the existing attention directed at the respective topic.
This brings us to the last point, the commandment to make your story relevant to the reader, ideally in the very first paragraph because people obviously have the attention span of a goldfish. This sounds absolutely reasonable and actionable. It just happens to be wrong. Because what are the topics that people love to read about? Among the top areas consumed by readers are certainly dinosaurs and the universe. If you can tell me how potentially habitable planets (light-years away from us and thus certainly beyond our reach for at least many decades), new sub-atomic particles, or prehistoric beasts and where to find them directly impact the life of the average Joe, be my guest. Relevance or utility only makes up one reason why people read an article. General curiosity, humor, and the incentive to stay informed about major, slow-moving developments are other reasons. And, most likely, there are many more reasons to read.
So if people like to read about important things, about complex things, about positive things, and, most important, about a lot of things, then why are we not allowed to write about important things? Regardless of whether they happen to coincide with current events. Why do all writing workshops hammer the notion of ‘making your message relevant to people’ into the heads of young writers? This maxim has the unfortunate consequence of deceiving your audience, who is starting to wonder why we still have no general cure for cancer yet, if every second study claims to be relevant for a cancer cure. By making your content cool and compelling, without pandering to the immediate practical needs of your audience, you at least do not undermine the credibility of science communication and journalism more broadly in the process. There simply is no specific, current event which necessitated this very article. Which does not mean at all that this article is superfluous or ill-timed. I am convinced that this is an important message and I would like to live and write in a society in which important things can be said because they are important, not because they are opportune.
