Media fellowship week 1: Countryfile

On my first day at BBC Countryfile, I followed the directions from Birmingham New Street only to end up at the glossy shop front of Harvey Nic’s. “There must be some mistake” thought I, but no – it turns out that in Birmingham the Beeb lives above a posh new shopping mall.

“But surely there is some kind of mistake” you might ask, “what are you doing a television studio – don’t you do seaweed studies or penguin counting or something?” I’m here because I have been awarded a Media Fellowship by the British Science Association (formerly known as the British Association, or BA, before the confusion with a well known airline got too much).

In what might best be described as ‘work experience for grown-ups’ I am going to spend six weeks working at Countryfile in order to learn how ‘the media’ works. The aim of the Fellowship scheme is to improve understanding and communication between scientists and journalists. The hope is that I’ll return to academia and spread the word that journalists do not all have horns and a trident and are quite nice actually, so long as we talk to them in a sensible language (by which I mean plain English, not jargon, obscenities or pirate).

So far, my duties at Countryfile have included watching a safety video in which Anthea Turner’s hair catches fire, opening nearly a thousand entries to the photo competition (in total there were more than 30,000 entries) and racking my brains for interesting rural story ideas. And yes, I did get to meet John Craven; I went to watch his commentary being dubbed over some underwater footage for a piece on marine nature reserves.