I LIKE TO ASK HOW THE WORLD WORKS
Her first encounter with the popularisation of science was in secondary school when she helped out as volunteer at the Researchers' Night science festival. Zuzana Vitková studied journalism at Comenius University Bratislava and is now Denník N's science reporter. She has held dozens of interviews with Slovak scientists, some of which have also been published in book form. Recently, she succeeded in the first round of the ERC Frontiers residency program for science journalists. At the beginning of September, she left for a stay in Germany, where she will spend 5 months at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. Before leaving, she told us about her work as a journalist and about the stay she was embarking on.
You studied journalism at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University. What made you choose this study programme?
Both of my parents were journalists and when I was in elementary school, my father worked for the Pravda daily and my mom managed a magazine about Slovak expats. Ever since I was little we watched the news, discussed politics and world events, and I found all that very interesting. While studying at the Ladislav Novomeský grammar school in Bratislava, I wrote for the school magazine called “Tomášičkár” and even served as its editor-in-chief for a while. My and my classmates enjoyed working on the magazine and we particularly loved writing reports from school trips. After grammar school, I went to study at Comenius University.
How did your university education affect your career?
I have always been interested in many things and I easily get excited about anything, so journalism was the perfect fit. During my studies, I chose optional subjects that broadened my horizons, like comparative religious studies, cultural studies, sociology or psychology. Now, my editorial mandate permits me to call any expert and ask them how things work: from black holes to long-standing mathematical problems. The longer I do it, the more I think I could not have picked a better profession.
You work as a reporter for the Denník N daily paper. What attracted you to news writing?
During my studies I dabbled in television journalism when I worked as programming assistant for the Teleráno morning show. It was good experience, but I feel more at home in news writing. In addition to writing articles, I also record podcasts - it is no traditional radio production and the rules for podcasts are more relaxed; that is another thing I enjoy doing.
You said you were interested in many subjects; was science something you focussed on from the beginning?
Originally, my favourite subject was foreign journalism and that is what I went to study, but science got thrown in my way and I realised that it would be ideal for me. The topics are very diverse and as part of my work, I learn how concepts like evolution or the universe work, how an allergy to wasp venom develops, and similar things. I have the opportunity to dive into a topic, conduct research and then ask someone who actually understands it - I really like the process. My work also gives me creative freedom and I can choose topics myself, responding to any current events in science that come along. During the pandemic I wrote about covid, vaccine development or clinical trials, but when nothing major occurs, I’ll do something for fun, like a long interview about the life of ants.
How did you enter the world of science?
I was around when the science.sk portal was created and my job was to set it up, later acting as its editor-in-chief responsible for content. A while after that, when Denník N was founded, we began exchanging content and it published our articles. For several months, I worked in the PR department of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and then I went abroad. I spent three years in Australia, earning my living by manual labour, picking fruits and vegetables such as mangoes, pineapples and cabbage. It was physically demanding, but I have fond memories of that time. After returning to Slovakia, I was lucky because they still remembered me at Denník N and I was in the right place at the right time when they were looking to fill a post in the science department: everything worked out very elegantly.
What does your daily job look like?
I have been at Denník N for about four and a half years, and I collaborate on science topics with Otakar Horák. I choose topics myself, drawing from press releases and major international science portals. Usually, there is no shortage of topics, and I have a number of them going on at once: I record several interviews, which then haunt me at night, untranscribed. Alongside all this I communicate with the editor and other editorial staff, receive tips from them, but otherwise I have a lot of freedom in choosing my topics. My texts are mostly long-form, and I also produce a bi-weekly podcast about science named N2, and collaborate on an absurdist humour podcast called Toto vystrihneme (We’ll cut this out).
Do you have a field or topic of science that fascinates you?
This is a common question, but the answer changes with time. I really like space, nature, animal behaviour: ants, bees, anything really; and I'm interested in genetics. These are my favorite topics at the moment and are easily converted into stories.
You published a book named ‘Ako chutí tarantula’ (What does a tarantula taste like), which contains a selection of 25 interviews with Slovak scientists.How were you choosing them?
Me and my editor used the interviews produced for the N2 podcast series. Our first criterion was to choose information that does not obsolesce quickly, unlike the podcasts I did during the covid pandemic when the situation was developing rapidly. Next, we wanted to cover the broadest range of research topics, and avoid having ten interviews about space, but include a selection of texts about explosions in the sun, food testing, gem formation, etc. The book is not supposed to be a pre-meditated cross-section of Slovak science because the interviews themselves were recorded over several years depending on what was happening at the moment, what my interests were, or in response to a major discovery. In some interviews, researchers express their opinions about Slovak science and the reasons why they decided to stay in Slovakia, or leave the country.
Recently, you succeeded among 33 applicants from 20 countries in a new European Research Council initiative. You were one of seven journalists, who won the Frontiers residency program to stay in a selected European research institution for five months. What was your project that earned you this success?
I have long been toying with the idea of going somewhere and I was looking for a suitable challenge. One day I received an e-mail from the Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (CVTI) about this new programme, and once again I was in the right place at the right time. Zuzana Reptová from CVTI helped me with the numerous administrative details of the application. First of all, I needed to choose a European scientific institution doing frontier research. The stay is not about working in their PR department, but doing independent, original journalism and a project. I will be at the German Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, which is the recipient of several ERC grants. It is located in a harbour near Bremen and has research stations in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, where experts study changes at the poles connected to climate change, a topic that I find fascinating. Polar climate change research is also important in view of various conspiracy theories concerning the climate crisis that are spreading and either downplay or even openly deny it. My goal is to interview scientists who have devoted their entire lives to this research and who have known for a long time what we often don't want to see. I want to relay their stories and experiences to the Slovak reader in a series of articles and potentially a book.
Eva Kopecká