Getting this one out a day early … On this episode, I was joined by North Carolina State University student journalist Erin Ferrare. Erin is a junior majoring in science, technology, and society with a specialization in science and technical writing.
She's also a sports writer for Technician, the school newspaper at NC State. She recently wrote a piece 'The Invisible Girl on Press Row' about the contrast in experiences between male and female writers in covering college sports and the Carolina Hurricanes.
And she's also written about how men's sports at her school have been more highlighted than women’s sports at her school on social media.
I learned of Erin through Melissa Ludtke's newsletter, Let's Row Together – Melissa is a pioneer among women in sports journalism.
We talked to Erin about both her sportswriting and science writing experiences (an example of the latter, here), how she views her purpose as a journalist, and more. Below is an excerpt of the interview with edits made for length and clarity.
How did the idea for The Invisible Girl originate?
I was recently covering a women's basketball tournament that NC State played in and I realized walking in and just walking around and sitting down on press row. No one waved hi to me. No one asked how I was doing and it was surprising because I knew everyone there.
I have covered these games with these people since I started and it was really surprising because then my colleague, who happened to be male, was getting these handshakes, was getting 'how are you doing? Oh, who do you think's winning the game right now in the NFL?' That kind of camaraderie while I was in the middle of them and they were talking over me, like physically standing above me, talking over me. And that really made me mad.
We're not over Zoom anymore. We're not in a virtual world. You can easily include people in conversations. Another thing, which I mentioned in the article was that I cover the Carolina Hurricanes for Technician alongside another writer for and looking down that press row. Again, all guys.
And a correspondent who we had who was interested in covering the Hurricanes, who's a girl, came with me for her first game. And a few points throughout the night, she made the comment of Oh my gosh, I don't know how you can do this. You're the only girl. Is that normal? Is there another woman reporter here? What do we do in the locker room? Are we allowed in? And so those questions really got my gears turning.
What's the piece that you've done science-wise that you're most proud of?
Over the summer, I was at Yale School of Public Health up in New Haven, and they let me write about some research being done about smoke inhalation when it comes to wildfires, and I thought that was really cool. That was my first experience with really heavy text. So I was fully reading a research report, published in a journal, and having to fully translate that for the general public. That was a really tough piece to do, but I was very proud of myself when I got it done to really be able to send it to someone and have them say, oh, now I know more about this, which happened, which was really cool for me to see personally.
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How do you view your purpose and what you do as a journalist?
So when it comes to sports writing, I would view my purpose as mainly just one more person taking a step forward. I'm not fully breaking the barriers. I'm just I'm just a girl in college interested in sports, but that's still something that's dramatic to some people, that's still like a big deal, controversial to some people.
I'm always trying to talk up women's sports. I'm trying to anyone who will listen, honestly and really be that voice. So maybe someone else who's interested can see, oh, she really likes it. Maybe I'll give it a try.
And when it comes to science writing, kind of mentioned before, just helping people understand what's going on because science is such a powerful tool and it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Scientific discoveries affect us every day. Being able to help someone understand science to then help them through their daily lives or help them create more of a conversation about the scientific topic is also very important to me.
How has being a journalist impacted you as a person and how you view just things in the world?
I love listening now.
I will listen to anyone about anything, whether that's in science, where I'm part of a sorority specifically for girls in science and engineering, and I will just let people rant to me about their research or this cool class that they had to do as an elective for their nuclear engineering. I love listening to it.
Not only that, I can now ask deeper questions to them about their story and how they see this potential hypothetical class as part of their life and their story and their path forward.
Being a part of journalism has helped me become a better understander of people and help me become closer with a lot of people as well through that.
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