Lieberman, Ornstein on health as a top 5 beat

Nov. 30th, 2010 by Andrew Van Dam
Filed under: Health journalism 

Earlier this month, Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles stirred things up with his lively post on the five most important beats for a local newspaper or website. As you might have heard, health didn’t make the cut (though the related “food” beat is at the top of the list).

Under pressure from commenters and tweeters, Niles conceded that health would be a contender for any “top 6″ list. He elaborated on his health take in the comments, essentially arguing that local health coverage would fall under “Top 5″ categories like labor, business and food.

Angilee Shah, who writes the Career GPS feature over at Reporting on Health, took Niles’ bait and defended health journalism with the help of AHCJ President Charles Ornstein and AHCJ Immediate Past President Trudy Lieberman.

Ornstein’s take:

Even if you factor in the health stories that can be written by the wires, think of all the local health institutions that consumers rely on—doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, assisted living centers, other health professionals. Do you really expect the reporter who covers the local bank or the local shopping scene to parachute in and cover these institutions well? A reporter covering health understands the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, assisted living and nursing homes, etc. To ask a local government reporter or education reporter to thoroughly cover food deserts in their community or childhood obesity in their schools is too big of a stretch.

And, Shah describes Lieberman’s take:

Lieberman takes an equally adamant stance. “I argue strenuously that this should be a beat, and it should be a dedicated beat with a well-trained reporter,” she said in a phone conversation. Dwindling local health coverage has increased the gap between Washington policy makers and the communities their policies affect. Local journalists should be explaining the effects of complicated health care laws on specific communities. She points to “bright spots” in local health news, such as a Las Vegas Sun series about hospital safety in Nevada.

“I think reporters need to know what’s allowed and how that should translate into what people are seeing, and whether or not they’re being deceived at a local level,” Lieberman said. “It’s a Washington story but it’s not a Washington story. It’s a local story.”

Your take?

There are plenty of small-town reporters in AHCJ, many of whom have more than just health care on their plates. What do you folks think? How many reporters does a newspaper or website need to have before it can dedicate one of them to health care journalism?

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Comments

One Comment on Lieberman, Ornstein on health as a top 5 beat

  1. Ryan Sabalow on Wed, 1st Dec 2010 12:19 pm

    2. Here’s a comment I posted on Angilee’s post over at Reporting on Health.

    Though health reporting is important, I don’t think a small-town paper with just five beats to choose from could realistically have a full-time health reporter.

    This is coming from a small-town GA who sometimes covers health.

    If I was an editor and I had to pick five reporters at a small-town, rural paper like mine, their beats would be:

    – Public safety

    – City government

    – County-regional government

    The bottom two would be a toss-up between the following three (in no particular order):

    – Environment

    – Education

    – Health

    Since I only had two bodies, I’d probably just divvy up those beats among two general assignment reporters.

    Niles says faith and food deserve full-time beats. What planet does this guy live on? When budget problems caused our paper to cut back our religion and food coverage (we used to have full-time staffers) there were a few complaints, but hardly enough to say the community was clamoring for more news on the latest church social or how to make Baklava.

    Back to health. It’s an important topic, sure, but stuff like crime, tax increases and school closures have a more immediate impact on people’s lives, and that’s what gets eyeballs on newsprint or clicks on a website.

    Health stories, though important to tell, just don’t have that same immediacy. And now that we can track what people are reading, page-view counts show that health stories don’t drive clicks like a good old bank robbery or a proposed water-rate increase.

    Plus, reporters at a small-town paper like mine are routinely asked to write at least two stories a day simply to fill white space for the next day’s edition.

    Health reporting requires depth and research, I’d argue even more so on a local level, where relevant, hyper-local health stories aren’t just handed to a reporter.

    I challenge even the best health journalist to write two, well-researched, fair and timely local stories a day on the small-town health beat, where there are no medical schools cranking out studies, where there are no trials on the latest medical gizmos and where the reporter is far, far away from policymakers deciding the latest healthcare legislation.

    Ryan Sabalow

    Redding, Calif. Record Searchlight

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