About six months ago in Tempe, Arizona, about two dozen young scientists, policy wonks, and communicators gathered for a “pitch slam.” In a hotel meeting room near the Arizona State University campus, teams that each included a writer (or blogger or radio producer) and an academic expert lined up to give brief descriptions of articles they planned to write. The judges at the front of the room included a literary agent, a Simon and Schuster editor, the editor of Nature, a Smithsonian editor, and me. Doing our best American Idol imitations, we reacted to each of the pitches. Later in the day we met individually with each of the pitch teams to discuss how to best translate their ideas into effective articles.
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