UMBC Hosts Media Workshop for Faculty Researchers and bwtech@UMBC Entrepreneurs

Nearly two dozen UMBC faculty researchers and bwtech@UMBC entrepreneurs attended a media workshop held in the research and technology park’s new CyberHive on Thursday, February 20th. UMBC’s Office of Institutional Advancement organized the event in collaboration with bwtech@UMBC as an opportunity for researchers and entrepreneurs to learn about media relations and strategies to gain visibility for their work.

Attendees heard from three local journalists: Sarah Gantz from the Baltimore Business Journal, Liz Gormisky from Defense Daily, and Lisa Palmer, an NSF-funded science communication fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center and freelance journalist who has written for publications such as The New York Times, Scientific American and Slate.

In their talks and the Q&A session that followed, Gantz, Gormisky and Palmer discussed how to communicate and build relationships with journalists to generate interest in new research or technologies. Additional topics included how various types of publications work on different timetables and use different types of sources, and how to tailor story pitches to fit particular news outlets.