Becoming an Operations Research Newsmaker Through the Media

A few years ago, at the INFORMS Charlotte conference, there was a terrific (I am a bit biased, I admit) panel entitled: Becoming an O.R./Analytics Newsmaker, that I even wrote a blogpost on because I thought the tips on dealing with the media were definitely worth preserving and sharing,

Joining me, as panelists, were: Jack Levis of UPS, Dr. Margaret Brandeau of Stanford, and Dr. Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois. The panelists have had experience with major news outlets, including the Associate Press, radio shows, TV programs, and documentaries. Barry List, the Communications Director of INFORMS at that time, had organized the panel and Peter Horner, the Editor of OR/MS Today, was also present. The panelists are all (now) INFORMS Fellows.

What I have learned, in addition, since that panel, based on experiences that I have had is:

1.  You never know when you might be contacted by the media, so always be prepared. It might be for a story that a journalist needs to finish with a tight deadline. When I was at Oxford University as a Visiting Fellow, for example, and in London to give a talk at Imperial College in June 2016, I received a message late at night from a journalist in Canada, who had heard of the talk on cybersecurity that I had given at the University of Waterloo and wanted my impressions on ransomware. We had a phone conversation and his article was published before midnight.

2. Sometimes you may have to wait weeks for an interview, as I recently experienced. First, I was asked if I was available to be interviewed on disaster management at 11:30PM on the same night that I was flying back from our INFORMS conference in Houston (October 25, 2017) so I, graciously, declined. There were some negotiations for another time and, this past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Terry Gilberg, who is the host and Executive Producer of the radio show Think!America. That interview aired this past weekend and it is 22 minutes into last Saturday's show, which can be accessed here. She was intrigued by the article I had written in The Conversation: Response to natural disasters like Harvey could be helped with game theory and wanted me on her show.  I enjoyed the interview a lot and she even followed up with a nice phone call to my Isenberg School office!

In late August I was interviewed by Angela Kokott for her radio show in Calgary, Canada, also on my research with collaborators on disaster relief and game theory.

3. In many cases (such as 2 above) one may not get questions ahead of time so you have to be creative and anticipate the kinds of questions that you might be asked. Always be ready with one or two strong takeaway messages!  In contrast, last July, while I was a Summer Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, I was interviewed for the Matt Townsend Radio Show on Infrastructure Spending. One of the producers had sent me sample questions ahead of time and I was really pumped. The script was not very closely followed, but it did provide a framework. Townsend, as Gilberg and Kokott, are fabulous interviewers - very dynamic and provocative and I enjoyed these interviews tremendously.

4. And last winter, after my article: Uncertainty in blood supply chains creating challenges for the industry was published, I was contacted by our local NPR radio station for a segment: America's Blood Economy. My interviewer was Karen Brown and you get read the interview transcript here. 
For this interview, I had to show up in the recording studio, which was on caampus and very convenient.

5. A few years earlier, after  speaking on a panel at the AAAS meeting in Washington DC, I was contacted by a journalist in Italy and ended up talking about the Braess paradox on Italian radio! 

You can see from the above examples (and I have more, including experiences on TV shows and documentaries that I have been part of), that if you share your Operations Research in print outlets or even give good talks, news can be picked up by media outlets. So, do keep that great research going and try to disseminate it further since that is how you can broaden the impact.

Your university might also be able to help or sometimes even the publisher of the journal in which your exciting research has appeared but, honestly, it is also up to you. And, it can be very rewarding, fun, and also a great way in which to grow professionally.