Q&A: The science beat is moving fast. Here’s how reporters are keeping up.

Since President Donald Trump assumed office in January, there has been a supernova of stories related to science, climate change and academic funding.

Executive orders, staffing shake-ups, and sweeping policy reversals have kept science journalists working overtime to follow the facts. But beyond filing stories at record speed, some are also grappling with burnout, uncertainty and the emotional toll of covering a field under siege.

How are journalists keeping up, doing their jobs well and still taking care of themselves?

Scienceline spoke with three science journalists who cover different topics relating to these developments:

Angie Voyles Askham of The Transmitter, covering systems neuroscience and U.S. federal research funding

Grace Wade of New Scientist, covering public health, nutrition and biotechnology

Carolyn Gramling of ScienceNews, covering earth and climate

These interviews were conducted separately and have been edited for clarity and length.

What’s your background?

Askham: I was a neuroscience researcher. I did my PhD in neuroscience, finished in 2015. And then I moved into journalism from there.

Wade: I went to school for journalism, but always knew I wanted to do science journalism.

Gramling: My background is oceanography before I became a journalist.

How has your work changed since January?

Gramling: It’s been really a roller coaster. There’s just a lot has happened in a really short period of time. So it’s kind of overwhelming, especially like what’s happening with NOAA…I know folks who were there and it’s you’re directly affected by these cuts and it’s just been really overwhelming and I you know I feel like we’re watching things happen in real time that are going to make the history books and I don’t know where it’s all going to end up. So yeah, it’s exhausting.

Askham: Things have been changing so fast that we’ve had to just kind of work at maybe a speed that we weren’t before where we’re always trying to do things as timely as possible. But with the rapid-fire way things are changing, it’s a little different. …It’s stressful in certain ways, of course, because, often you’re putting out this terrible news to people as far as, like, funding being cut and things like that.

Wade: About 50% of our readers in the US and about 50% are in the UK, right? And they’re two very different health care systems… But with the Trump administration, the appetite seems to have changed and readers, even in the UK, actually, especially in the UK, are really interested in what’s happening in the US. So I would say, you know, since Trump took office in January, a big change has just been that I’ve been covering it more than I have in the past. 

How do you keep yourself grounded?

Askham: My editors are great and… they’ve said, I think to all of us reporters: “If you do feel burned out we can change up beats, we try to share the load across the reporting team.” They’re sensitive to whether we feel stressed out or not, given, especially if it’s a fast-paced kind of reporting and they encourage us to not burn ourselves out.

Wade: Sometimes [my boss] will say things like, “I feel like you have a lot on right now. How are you doing?” And I, something I don’t mind is having a lot on because I know that the news cycle kind of has its ebbs and flows. And so I don’t mind if there are moments where there’s a lot going on. I’m working a lot. Things feel really stressful because I know there’s going to be a moment where it’s not.

Gramling: One of the ways in which I personally found some resilience was, actually, I have a child and I would talk about science to my kid. I got invited to his classroom at one point and was talking about science to them. And they’re so into it and they’re so excited by it. And it helped me feel more excited about it too… I would try to find, you know, try to find the good actors. Even if they’re children. 

Has it been easier or harder to speak with sources?

Askham: It can be both… Depending on the topic, some people are eager to talk. And some people are obviously hesitant because they’re worried about retribution to one extent or another. And so, it’s harder to get people on the record than if you were just talking about new research that came out for sure. But there’s also this sense of scientists, when they do feel like they can talk, they feel like this is a very important subject to talk about. 

Wade: I think it depends on the topic, right? Like we were poking around trying to get a story potentially going on cuts to sexual and gender minority studies, research funding. And I definitely had a lot of sources then who would only speak off the record because they were scared to go on the record. But I’ve experienced that less so now, I think, as the dust has sort of settled…

Gramling: Well, for government sources… There are definitely more hoops to jump through. People have to check with, I mean, there was always, for some agencies, you always had to go through the press office in order to get interviews. But now it feels much more true. It’s harder to get people on the phone in the government agencies, but I haven’t actually noticed with any other sources, you know, university sources, for example, I have not seen any real difference.

How do you protect vulnerable sources?

Askham: Something that my editors and I talk about a lot is we generally don’t like to do anonymous sourcing, but sometimes it makes sense. And so we, you know, use best practices to verify that someone is who they say they are. And yeah, it’s a constant, it’s a thing we discuss a lot in the newsroom, I’d say, as far as what is appropriate for a given story and how much information do we need to give our readers.

How has it been covering more policy stories?

Gramling: There’s a ramp up… I don’t have that background. I don’t have that depth of knowledge that I do maybe with the actual science itself… I’m spending more time definitely getting up to speed on the nitty gritty of government policies that I wouldn’t necessarily have paid attention to so closely before. 

On the one hand, it’s tiring. But on the other hand… It’s interesting, right?

Do you feel like your work is more important now?

Wade: As I’ve grown older and done reporting more is I actually feel that what’s most important now more than ever is really, really trying to do unbiased journalism which is really difficult because we all have biases… I bring this up because my parents have different political beliefs than I do and it sometimes feels like we’re in two alternate realities…

And so I think that’s what feels most important to me now, is making sure that the work I do and how I present myself in public, whether that be social media, or, you know, how I speak to people in interviews or on podcasts, is to not give anyone any, you know, ammunition to not trust me, or to feel that I’m trying to push a narrative.

What’s your advice for young science journalists?

Askham: Just talking to scientists is really a good way to start. Find out what they care about, what they are worried about, you know, which grants, how does the grant application process work, how does the review process work. Where are things getting held up?

Wade: Don’t be afraid of sounding stupid… Your job as a journalist is to explain things to people who don’t know what they are. So it’s okay to just sound stupid… I think sometimes I don’t ask them because I’m like, “I know the answer.” Or I don’t want the person I’m talking to think I’m stupid and don’t know the answer. But it’s okay to come off as stupid. And usually you don’t. But it’s okay if you do.

Gramling: I know it’s an exhausting sort of time to be living in, but also I think keeping a sense of mission and a sense of hope, you know, and trying to find ways to remind yourself of what you really love about what you’re doing. Because that is the thing that will keep you going… So, love for the work—very important.