BioNews is primarily written by volunteers, but the editors decide which stories to cover and commission. The BioNews team work on Mondays and Fridays.
News - Commissioning
BioNews is a news digest, meaning that we primarily cover stories that are already in the press. We do this to mythbust and challenge hype around scientific developments, so that people are better informed about what assisted conception and genomic medicine can offer.
On a Friday, Joanne and Hannah look at all the stories related to fertility treatment/assisted conception, genetics, genomics, stem cells and embryo research that have appeared in the press over the preceding week.
From these, they make a shortlist of stories that we will cover in BioNews that week. They choose based on how relevant a story is to our audience, the significance of the subject matter, and how much press coverage it has already had.
The editors then start matching them to our volunteer writers' areas of expertise and interest – not only do we want the articles to be written by someone who is an expert in the subject area, but we also want them to enjoy writing for us!
News - Writing and editing
The volunteer writers have the remains of Friday, and the whole weekend to complete their commissions. This fairly tight turnaround is necessary because news – by its very nature – is time sensitive.
BioNews aims to present the news in a way that is accurate, factual, and does not contain unattributed opinions. We take great care to go back to source material – such as a scientific journal publication, or court judgment – to get the whole picture, not just whichever aspect has piqued the interest of the mainstream media.
We encourage our writers to use plain English where possible, minimise jargon and make our content as accessible as possible to lay readers. We also try to keep our news pieces within a consistent 'house style'.
On Monday morning the volunteer writers submit their articles, and the editors spend the day editing and factchecking them, publishing them on the PET website and finally sending out the BioNews newsletter.
Comment and Reviews
As well as news, also publish two types of opinion pieces: reviews and comment articles. Commissioning editor and PET's director Sarah Norcross is often involved in sourcing comment pieces, using her wide network of connections.
PET's mission is to educate and to debate the responsible application of reproductive and genomic science. As such we welcome comment pieces expressing opinions from a wide range of voices, including those with whom we might disagree! From time to time, we also publish further comment pieces by other voices in response to a previous article.
Comment and review writers generally have longer to write their pieces, and they may have more back-and-forth between the authors and editors to ensure a result that our audience can comprehend, but does not compromise the author's opinions.
With your contribution, we can continue to keep BioNews free and accessible to all.
BioNews
Putting the News in BioNews
BioNews captures all the essential news in assisted reproduction, genetics and genomics and embryo research each week so that you can keep up to date.
Curating the news takes time, effort and skill and some robust debate!
To make BioNews an effective news round-up service the editors scour the news each week, they evaluate the stories they have found and decide whether each one is worthy of bringing to your attention. The type of questions they consider are
- How significant it is?
- Has it been accurately reported?
- Has it received a lot of coverage?
- Would we be letting you down if we didn’t cover it?
How significant is it?
We receive lots of press releases about scientific papers, conference abstracts, updates from companies about their latest widget or drugs, etc. etc. There is so much news and things people would like to be considered as news that we have to make tough decisions about what we should cover.
When deciding whether to include it in BioNews the editors discuss how significant it is. They ask is it a first? Is it in humans? Is the paper in a reputable journal? Is it true that she really is the oldest woman to have had IVF? They ask a lot of questions.
Has it been accurately reported?
Sometimes the mainstream media gets the wrong end of the stick with a story – if the editors think this has happened then they usually want to include the story so that BioNews can set the record straight and help to clear up any confusion.
We take great care to go back to source material – such as a scientific journal, or court judgment – to get the whole picture, not just whichever aspect has piqued the interest of the media.
Has it received a lot of media coverage?
If the story has been covered everywhere from The Sun to the New York Times and everyone is talking about it then, more likely than not, we will cover it.
Would we be letting our readers down if we didn’t cover it?
Clearly, all the decisions the editors make are subjective and each week we have more articles that we would like to cover than we have the capacity to. That is when the debate starts, and the editors decide which story should make the cut. The editors care passionately about this and these discussions often involve the whole team.
Who writes the news?
BioNews has a large pool of volunteer writers, over the years more than 500 have contributed. Many of them are post graduate students working on their PhDs in biological science, some are law graduates with a keen interest in medical law and ethics.
The editors try to match the news stories to our volunteer writers' areas of expertise and interest. We do this because not only do we want the articles to be written by someone who is an expert in the subject area, but we also want them to enjoy writing for us!
The volunteers are given their commissions on a Friday and write their articles over the weekend and file their copy on a Monday morning.
All our volunteer writers are fantastic. We have some truly exceptional volunteers who have written for BioNews for more than a decade, for example, Dr Antony Starza-Allen, Julianna Photopoulos, Dr Rachel Montgomery and Dr Jamie Heather.
With your contribution, we can continue to keep BioNews free and accessible to all.