Not a Straight Line: Stories about becoming a science journalist

In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share the unconventional paths that led them into science journalism.

Part 1: Keren Landman always wanted to be a writer, but her family didn’t see it as a practical career — so instead, she went to medical school.

Part 2: When Adithi Ramakrishnan gets to college, she only sees two career paths ahead of her: medical school or scientific research.

Keren Landman, M.D., is an independent health reporter and author of the newsletter Landmansplained. Her freelance writing has appeared in a range of publications, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, National Geographic, NPR, and the New York Times, and she has also worked as a staff reporter at Vox. She is trained as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, with experience serving as a disease detective at the CDC and conducting HIV and malaria research in resource-poor countries.

Adithi Ramakrishnan is a science reporter with The Associated Press and covers space, dinosaurs and the occasional tadpole. She told this story while she was a science reporting fellow with The Dallas Morning News where she wrote about solar eclipses, sweltering Texas summers and the science of spicy food. Adithi has a degree in neuroscience from The College of William and Mary and was a 2021 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC.

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