Writing for the mainstream media: some tips

Maybe you’re interested in writing for publications that speak to everyday ordinary people, but you’re not quite sure where to start…how do you pick a topic or come up with an idea? And then once you have that, how do you actually write about it?

I spoke about writing for the mainstream media for ISCAST at the 2024 Conference on Science and Christianity. This post is an edited version of that talk.

I’ll go through what I see as some of the main ingredients for good writing, how to communicate complex or controversial ideas, a few basic writing tips. These are all pretty general concepts. They apply to a lot of different writing, and they’re what I see as the key ingredients of a good piece for a general audience.

Finding ideas

What are some topics that you care about and could talk about for ages? What’s your passion? What fires you up? What do you wish people understood better?

Write some of those down.

Keep your ideas in mind while I start to go through some of the basics of what makes a good piece of writing for popular media, and how you might turn those ideas into something.

Match your idea to your audience

Imagine you’re in a casual social setting, maybe you’re at the pub with some friends, or it’s Christmas lunch, or it’s morning tea after a church service. Does that change any of the topics you’d talk about?

For example, I wouldn’t talk about science communication best practice – that’s a bit too academic and nerdy, best reserved for other researchers or practitioners in this space. Or I wouldn’t talk about my favourite strategies for a very obscure video game I like to play – unless my conversation partner also plays it.

If your ideas need to match a very specific audience, which means maybe these aren’t suitable for the kind of popular media we’re talking about.

Have a strong key message

You need a clear and strong key message – an idea that’s developed into a persuasive argument, or a story that you have to tell which has a ‘point’ behind it. Think about what you want your reader to think about, or learn, or understand better, or how you want them to feel.

One way to do this is to imagine you’re talking to someone about this, and that person keeps asking “okay, but so what? Why should I care?” If you keep drilling down, this can help you develop and articulate your idea into an article.

Be relatable, tell stories

Can you tell a personal story or anecdote? Find a common experience or emotion that people can relate to, and include that in your piece. Even people who haven’t been through your exact experience can probably relate to times they’ve felt the way you felt – that’s all you need to be able to connect with your audience and talk about something new.

Find a good news peg

Why are you writing about this NOW? Wherever possible, you want to try and connect your topic to some kind of other thing that’s happening now, or happened recently. Something timely, a “peg” that you can hang your story off.

That could be a new report that’s just been published, or new research that’s just come out. It might be that a public figure has said something important or controversial and that’s making the news. Or maybe it’s an anniversary: has it been ten years since something happened?

Another good place to look is what’s happening in popular culture, what new TV shows or movies are getting a lot of hype or publicity, and whether there’s themes they explore that relate to your idea.

Some ideas are relevant regardless of when they’re written – we call these “evergreen” topics – but even with those, it’s always better when we can answer the “why now?” question.

Start with a good hook

What is the most interesting, surprising, or intriguing part of your whole article? What’s going to grab a reader’s attention and make them want to keep reading?

Usually, you’ll want to put this right at the start of your piece. Or you may want to ‘set the scene’ first, before posing an interesting question as a counterpoint.

“We are experiencing a surge in human activity in space … But should there be limits to our exploration?”

“Neil career as a theologian almost never happened. … his first passion, and intended career path, was mathematics. So what changed his mind?”

Watch your language

Good writing for popular media uses language that’s more casual, more conversational, and much more informal compared to academic writing. Think about writing similarly to how you talk. Very few people say ‘thus’ when they talk. It’s a word I tend to edit out a lot when I see it in writing.

It needs to be personal as well, which can be jarring if you’re used to academic writing, which is all about being objective and dispassionate. This is the time to feature your voice, your opinions, to share how you feel about something.

If you must use technical terms, or words that aren’t commonly used outside your field, make sure you explain them. Use analogies and examples and illustrations so that people can understand better.

None of this means you’re dumbing down your message – you’re making it easier to understand.

Welcome the reader in

When writing about topics where there may be some controversy or conflict, if you’re addressing a reader who might disagree with you, it’s important that they feel welcome to engage with you.

We don’t want people to feel like they’re being pushed away, because then they just won’t read your piece at all, or worse, they’ll become even more set in their own position and less likely to consider changing their mind.

What that looks like is avoiding language that’s combative or unnecessarily harsh or disrespectful. You can acknowledge and show respect for another’s position without accepting it yourself.

Avoid the deficit model

In science communication, we often talk about avoiding the deficit model of communicating ideas. That’s the idea that assumes oh, people just don’t know all the facts about this. If people just knew all the facts, if they knew the evidence, then they would understand this topic and change their mind about it. Therefore, I’ll tell people the facts.

We know that a lot of the time, that approach just doesn’t work. People make decisions and form beliefs and change their behaviour based on a lot of other factors, the big one being what they value. If you fact dump on someone who doesn’t trust science, for example, you may end up pushing them even further away.

Instead, focus on values. A mother who is hesitant about vaccinating her young child is less likely to be swayed by someone saying “well, you just need to understand more about how vaccines work, here you go, look at all the statistics and evidence”. But if you say “hey, I see you care about the health and safety of your child, let’s talk about how vaccination is a fantastic way of protecting them from nasty diseases,” that’s a much better starting point.

(This is very oversimplified – public health and vaccination communication is a whole thing – but you get the idea.)

A few more writing tips

These are just a few pointers about some of the nuts and bolts of writing that may be helpful.

Active vs passive voice.

This is about changing the order of words in a sentence to shift the focus onto the subject of the sentence – the who, or what, is taking action. Here’s some examples.

Active: The dog bit the man. Subject verb object.
Passive: The man was bitten by the dog. The other way around.

Passive voice is very common in academic writing, especially scientific fields, but it tends to make writing for general audiences a bit detached and blah-sounding. It also often means longer sentences. Try to use active voice as much as possible.

Short sentences and short paragraphs. Especially in online writing, we might often have just two or three sentences per paragraph. Keep it punchy.

No references. In mainstream press, generally speaking, you won’t be able to publish footnotes or references. You also can’t include an in-text reference the same way you would in academic writing, like: (Bloggs et al, 2023).

What that means is you need to either not include references at all, or find other ways to describe them in the text. For online media, you might include links to your sources. In print media, you may need to get more creative. For example,

In his book Making Good, theologian Trevor Hart sums up this understanding…

WWF’s Living Planet report declares a “catastrophic” 73% decline in monitored wildlife populations…

However – always keep your own list of any sources that back up claims you make, in case an editor asks you about them.