Before completing her undergraduate studies, Sophie Hartley, a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, had an epiphany in the making.
“The classes I took in my last semester of college changed my career goals, but it started with my grandfather,” she says when asked what led her to science writing. She had studied comparative human development at the University of Chicago, which Hartley describes as “a combination of psychology and anthropology,” when she took courses in environmental writing and digital science communication.
“What if my life could teach me more about the complexities of life?” she thought.
Hartley’s grandfather introduced her to photography when she was younger, which helped her develop an appreciation for the natural world. Every summer, they explored the tide pools, the overgrown woods, and his large yard. He gave her a camera and encouraged her to photograph anything interesting.
“Photography was a doorway into science journalism,” she notes. “It allows you to capture the raw beauty of a moment and return to it later.”
Lasting impact through storytelling
Hartley spent time in Wisconsin and Vermont while growing up. It was then that she noticed a divide between rural communities and urban spaces. She wants to tell stories about communities that are less likely to be covered and “connect them to people in cities who might not otherwise understand what’s going on and why.”
Humans have important roles to play in halting the impacts of climate change, improving land management practices and policies, and taking better care of our natural resources, according to Hartley. Challenges related to conservation, land management and agriculture affect us all, which is why she believes effective science writing is so important.
“We are much more connected than we believe or realize,” says Hartley. “Climate change is creating problems throughout the agricultural supply chain.”
For her news writing course, Hartley wrote a story about how flooding in Vermont led to a hay shortage, which affected foods as diverse as goat cheese and beef. “When hay can’t dry, it’s ruined,” she says. “That means cows and goats don’t eat, which means they can’t produce our beef, milk and cheese.”
Ultimately, Hartley believes her work can create compassion for others while also educating people about how everything we do affects nature and each other.
“The connective tissue between people continues,” she said. “People living in cities are not exempt from rural concerns.”
Making connections to scientific writing
During her yearlong study at MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, Hartley is also busy producing reports for major news outlets.
Earlier this year, Hartley wrote a piece for Ars Technica which explored ongoing efforts to develop technology aimed at preventing car crashes with kangaroos. As Hartley reported, given the unique and unpredictable behavior of kangaroos, vehicle animal detection systems have proven ineffective. This has forced Australian communities to develop alternative solutions, such as virtual fencing, to keep kangaroos off the roads.
In June, Hartley co-produced a story for GBH News with Hannah Richter, a fellow student in the science writing program. They reported how and why officials at a new Peabody power plant are backing away from an earlier promise to run the facility on clean fuels.
The story was a collaboration between GBH News and the investigative journalism class in the science writing program. Hartley recalls the wonderful experience of working with Richter. “We were able to build on each other’s strengths and learn from each other,” she says. “The piece took a long time to report and write, and it was helpful to have a friend and colleague to constantly motivate me when we would pick it up again after a while.”
Co-reporting can also help evenly divide what can sometimes become a massive workload, especially with in-depth, well-researched pieces like the Peabody story. “When there’s so much research to do, it’s helpful to have another person to share the work with,” she continued. “It felt like everything was stronger and better, from the writing to the fact-checking, because we had two eyes on it during the reporting process.”
Hartley’s favorite part of 2024 focused on beech leaf blight, a deadly pathogen that is ravaging North American forests. Her story, which was later published in The Boston Globe Magazinefollowed a team of four researchers racing to discover how the disease works. Beech leaf blight kills quickly and en masse, leaving room for invasive species to thrive on the forest floor. Her interest in land management and natural resources shines through in much of her work.
Local news organizations are an endangered species as newsrooms across America shed staff and increasingly rely on aggregated news accounts from larger organizations. What may be missed, however, are opportunities to tell small-scale stories with potentially large-scale impacts. “The small, rural stories of accountability are being told less and less,” notes Hartley. “I think it’s important for communities to be aware of what’s going on around them, especially if it affects them.”