The use of interpretive reporting techniques and programs offering real world training to writers may provide solutions to the problems encountered in writing about science for the mass media. Both science and environmental writers have suggested that the problems they face would be decreased by the use of more interpretive and investigative reporting, and the use of interpretive reporting in science writing has in fact been on the rise. In recognition of the value to writers of personal or real world experience, some programs have been developed to offer such experience to science writers and to undergraduate students in science and environmental writing programs. At Lehigh University, students in one course write reports after attending meetings of local environmental groups, after visiting a local industrial or environmental site such as a steel plant, and after working in teams on three-month investigative studies of ongoing local environmental problems. In a second course, students work for environmental groups, preparing public relations materials. Courses in science writing require students to write interpretive magazine articles on controversial scientific issues and have enabled some students to attend and write about a meeting of a national scientific association. New experiential programs are planned for the future. (GW)