ooh, I must have a listen. All I do is set up these interview thingies... just trying to track down a rogue woodlander right now for one of the regional BBC stations who wants to talk to 'someone'. And firing off feature ideas to BBC programmes...

I've often marvelled at the coherency of interviewees on the Today programme, or (particular) Five Live's Wake up to Money, which is at 5.30am. Rather them than me...

[Raak] Yes. That's the one. Involvement via knowing a suitably numerate (or semi-numerate) linguist. No spin glasses as such, though voter models are relevant.

I get up at 6 on the days I have to be teaching at 8. And those days are rubbish, except when I can watch the sunrise from the tram. That's rather nice. On the other hand, that department is on holiday from next week, so I get a week of lie ins until the following week, which is my department's holiday. Wheee!

Huzzah for our beloved leader!

[rab] as a matter of (professional) interest, how do you alert the media to an interesting academic study? Was it published somewhere?

[pen] Traditionally, you would have a big-bang type discovery published in Nature or something like that, and their press team would do the business.

This case is a bit of an oddity - the work's been going on for years and has been presented in various forms at conferences, referred to in somewhat specialist publications and so on. Our press office got wind of it, I explained the situation, and it was generally felt that cos we were submitting a paper (which could take a couple of years to complete the review/publication process) and presenting it at the same time at the main linguistics conference in the US, it was reasonable to put out a press release. I was expecting it to go unnoticed, but was picked up by Radio New Zealand, the New Zealand Herald (front page), the Telegraph, the Glasgow Herald (page 5, above the fold), BBC Radio Scotland, Today, BBC Radio Wales and the World Service. I'm shattered, and generally want now to crawl under a stone.

[rab] Noooo! You were great. I guess it must be difficult to explain mathematical modelling to laymen, and for a presenter to pick up the gist of a study involving lots of people over several years and squeeze the right questions into a five-minute interview. I guess you're dealing with a lot of variables, but you summed it up pretty well. If I do my job properly, I get to put a lot of Woodland Trust people on the radio, and usually guide the presenter into asking the right questions: "You might like to ask why XXX happens, and what it means in the long term" etc. I didn't realise universities had press offices and the fact that it got picked up by so many publications means yours wrote a good press release and sent it out to the right media, with a view to possibly attracting the interest of potential funders...

[pen] The press officer I spoke to - for about an hour - is an ex-journalist, so he distilled it into a newsy-sounding story. (The version on the BBC website is basically the release verbatim). The presenters' briefs/scripts seemed to be cobbled together through informal chats with researchers/producers a few hours ahead of broadcast. 'Twould have been nice to have seen a copy myself beforehand, but I guess you can't have everything.