From Medical School Dropout to Editor-in-Chief of C&EN - ACS

Chapter 11

From Medical School Dropout to Editor-in-Chief of C&EN Downloaded by RMIT UNIV on December 30, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 4, 2014 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2014-1169.ch011

Rudy M. Baum* Editor-at-Large, Chemical & Engineering News, 3222 Miller Heights Road, Oakton, Virginia 22124 *E-mail: [email protected]

At the end of the arc of a career such as mine, much seems inevitable. My path from leaving medical school after one year to becoming editor-in-chief of Chemical & Engineering News was hardly a straightforward one, however. The theme that underpins my career has been an undying love of language and using it to communicate science. In today’s economic climate, it is hard to recommend that one pursue a science writing career. However, I can heartily recommend that young scientists be as passionate about being able to communicate their science as they are about doing it.

I retired as Editor-in-Chief of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) in September 2012. In my remarks at my retirement party, I pointed out that, at the end of one’s career, the events that shape a career often look inevitable. They are anything but, however. How I became Editor-in-Chief of C&EN illustrates the role of chance, the importance of mentors, and the value of flexibility in the arc of a successful career. It also shows why a chemistry degree opens doors far beyond the laboratory. I attended Duke University from 1971–1975. I was a pre-med, but Duke did not grant a degree in pre-med. The university insisted, wisely I think, that students had to choose a major in a specific subject. I intended to major in biology, but a fantastic advanced introductory chemistry course taught by Prof. Al Crumbliss convinced me to major in chemistry. I received a B.A. degree in chemistry. There was a real difference between a B.A. and a B.S. in chemistry from Duke at that time. The B.S. degree resulted © 2014 American Chemical Society

Cheng et al.; Careers, Entrepreneurship, and Diversity: Challenges and Opportunities in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.

Downloaded by RMIT UNIV on December 30, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 4, 2014 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2014-1169.ch011

from the ACS approved curriculum; the B.A. degree curriculum was slightly less rigorous. The main difference that I remember is that the B.S. required a twosemester course in physical chemistry, while the B.A. required only a one-semester course. Because I was a pre-med and interested in taking quite a few non-science courses, I chose to pursue the B.A. degree. I spent one year at Georgetown Medical School in Washington, D.C. I was a good student, but for many reasons, I had decided that I didn’t really want to become a doctor. I took a leave of absence from Georgetown, never really intending to go back. I was pretty certain that I would go to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in chemistry, but I needed a break from academe. Of course, I needed a job. In those days, looking for a job involved looking at classified advertisements in newspapers. I responded to a “blind ad” in the Washington Post. A blind ad told you what an employer was looking for, but didn’t identify the employer. It might look something like this: CHEMIST National scientific organization seeks bachelor’s degree chemist for staff associate position at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Send résumé and cover letter to: Washington Post Classified Advertisements P.O. Box 3241 Washington, D.C. 20036 The ACS Personnel Office called me a few days later and set up two interviews in the Education Department. I was actually offered two staff associate positions, and I took one in the Office of Continuing Education coordinating the Society’s Short Courses. I did that for a little over a year, and then moved to become the editor of what were called Audio Courses. It seems pretty primitive today, but they were courses on very technical topics and consisted of lectures on cassette tapes coordinated to a printed manual. After three and a half years in the Education Department, I was ready to move on. I had a vague notion of wanting to be a writer, but the short stories I had been writing in my spare time had not sold. I was half-heartedly looking into chemistry graduate degree programs. Then one Friday in early November 1979 I was procrastinating at work and looked at the bulletin board in the eight floor hallway. We actually had bulletin boards then, and notices and job postings on three-by-five cards were pinned to the cork board. There was a card that looked something like this: CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS Assistant Editor Washington News Bureau Position is responsible for reporting news and events relevant to chemistry, the chemical industry, and the American Chemical Society occurring in the federal government. Bachelor’s degree in chemistry required; reporting/editing experience desirable. 130



I immediately called the Personnel Office and indicated that I would like to apply for the job. It turns out that the job posting at C&EN had been up for the required two weeks and was going to be removed at the end of the day. The following week I interviewed at C&EN, but the interview was odd; I talked to two senior staff members who were involved in editing and production at C&EN, not reporting on the federal government. I found out that the assistant editor who worked in editing and production had applied for the government reporting position. The senior team at C&EN wanted to give him the job, but they didn’t know who they would replace him with. That turned out to be me. It gets stranger. I started at C&EN in January 1980. Sometime during the spring, the magazine’s West Coast Bureau Head resigned from C&EN to take a reporting position at Science. My hope was that one of the science and technology reporters in Washington would want to take the plum position in San Francisco and open up a writing job for me in Washington. I didn’t have any hope that C&EN’s Editor-in-chief, Mike Heylin, would send a completely inexperienced reporter to a one-person field office in California. Months rolled by. It was a time of very high inflation—16% or more per year. The economy was on the verge of a pretty severe recession. People were reluctant to pull up stakes and relocate. People were reluctant to change jobs. No one applied for what in the past had been one of the most sought-after jobs at C&EN. One Friday afternoon in November, the magazine’s staff editor, Ernie Carpenter, who I sort of reported to, came into my office as he was leaving for the day and asked me if I had ever thought about applying for the West Coast position. I said I had, but I didn’t think Mike Heylin would send me because I had no experience as a reporter. He said something like, “He probably wouldn’t have in the past, but he’s so disgusted with the situation, he just might consider you.” Talk about a ringing recommendation! On Monday, I officially applied for the job, Mike interviewed me, and then … nothing. Two weeks went by. It was driving me nuts. Then, once again on a Friday, Mike called me into his office and told me that I was going to be C&EN’s reporter in California. I became C&EN’s West Coast Bureau Head in March 1981 and spent 14 wonderful years covering chemistry in the western half of the U.S. and a variety of topics that interested me. I introduced coverage of the AIDS epidemic into C&EN. I covered the discovery of C60 and the fullerenes. And I met an incredible number of outstanding chemists at University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech, UCLA, and many other universities. In 1993, Mike Heylin decided that, for a number of reasons, C&EN needed a true managing editor, a position that had not been filled at the magazine for more than a decade. I was contacted by the executive search firm hired to fill the position and told that I was an internal candidate for the position if I was interested. I said I was. The interview process lasted several months and resulted in Madeleine Jacobs being hired. That fall, before C&EN’s annual Advisory Board/ Staff meeting, Madeleine told me she would like me to return to Washington to become the magazine’s assistant managing editor for science, technology, and education coverage. I started in that position in August 1994. In July 1995, Madeleine succeeded Mike as C&EN’s Editor-in-chief, and she named me managing editor. In 2003, Madeleine applied for and was selected 131



to succeed John Crum as Executive Director and CEO of ACS, and I succeeded Madeleine as Editor-in-chief of C&EN. See what I mean? Med school dropout. Blind ad in the Post. A chance glance at a bulletin board I never looked at. Bad economic times. Self-taught journalist. All of it adding up to a very successful career. C&EN was a great fit for me. I loved chemistry, but I was never a lab rat. I loved the intellectual side of chemistry much more than the practical side. In my career, many brilliant chemists around the world were my lifelong teachers. I was basically a graduate student for life who didn’t need to spend endless hours in the lab. Interestingly, when I started at C&EN, I thought I would eventually move on to a more general publication, but I found that I liked writing about chemistry at a level geared toward informing other chemists about developments in our science. I never had to define a “chemical bond” in my stories. So what are the career opportunities for science writers? I wish I could say they are bright, but I can’t. Journalism has been in a state of crisis for the past decade or more. The internet has been a truly disruptive technology for journalism because it has upset journalism’s longstanding business model. More people are reading newspapers and magazines than ever before, but for the most part they aren’t paying for the content they are consuming. Advertisers have deserted print publications in droves. Science journalism has taken a particular beating. Many newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations dropped science reporting altogether. That National Association of Science Writers (NASW) was founded in 1934. The organization currently has 2,254 full members and 269 student members. I went through the member roster—this was not a rigorous analysis!—and found 156 members working for news outlets. I found only 22 publications that employed two or more NASW members. Some of them are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Publications employing two or more NASW members in 2014

Some of these are venerable science magazines, but it is significant that the top three are publications that are primarily written for professional scientists.

132 Cheng et al.; Careers, Entrepreneurship, and Diversity: Challenges and Opportunities in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.


There are only four newspapers, one radio station—really a radio network—and no television stations. The good news is that there are more than 2,000 other NASW members. About half of these NASW members are freelancers and about half work as public information resources at universities and nonprofits like ACS. In fact, ACS does employ several NASW members in addition to those who work at C&EN. These are very talented science writers who are playing a vital role in keeping the public informed of developments in science and technology. So, are there career opportunities for communicating science? It is not a huge field, but it exists and it is a wonderful way to be involved in the chemistry enterprise even if you do not want to be a practicing chemist.

133 Cheng et al.; Careers, Entrepreneurship, and Diversity: Challenges and Opportunities in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.

From Medical School Dropout to Editor-in-Chief of C&EN - ACS

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