List of 2009’s best includes health care stories
Conor Friedersdorf of TrueSlant.com includes a number of health-care related stories among his list of best journalism of 2009. See his post for links and comments about each of his choices:
- “AIDS Relief and Moral Myopia” by Travis Kavulla in The New Atlantis
- ProPublica’s Sheri Fink’s piece, “Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices,” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine
- “Brain Gain” in The New Yorker by Margaret Talbot
- “An Epidemic of Fear,” in Wired, by Amy Wallace
- The New Yorker piece, “The Cost Conundrum,” by Atul Gawande
- “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” by David Goldhill, writing for The Atlantic
- “Fine Print,” for the radio program This American Life
- This American Life also gets a nod for a two-part broadcast explaining the American health care system
- “Game Drain” by Jeanne Marie Laskas in GQ
Schwitzer: Reliance on journals hinders coverage
AHCJ member and past board member Gary Schwitzer is featured on the cover of Minnesota magazine, the bimonthly publication of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association.
In the magazine, Schwitzer, who is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, discusses the quality of health reporting and questions he says journalists are not answering:
We’re not asking tough questions: What’s the quality of evidence? Who’s going to have access to it? What’s it going to cost? Who’s your source? What are his or her conflicts of interest?
When asked about reporters who are doing a good job, Schwitzer cites AHCJ board member and Associated Press medical writer Carla Johnson for her evidence-based reporting and AHCJ member Scott Hensley, who was - until yesterday - co-editor of The Wall Street Journal Health Blog.
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