Journalists learn more about using social media tools
By Shuka Kalantari (@skalantari; @KQEDhealth)
KQED Public Radio
Though blogging and social media have been around for some time now, some people still argue that blogging, social media and journalism should be independent of one another. Scott Hensley of NPR’s Shots blog contends that couldn’t be further from the truth.
During a panel about “Best practices in blogging and social media” at Health Journalism 2011, Hensley said bloggers and journalists are perfect matches for each other. So how does a blogger decide what to write about?
The #ahcj11 Twitter stream helped attendees share information at Health Journalism 2011.
“I want to write the most interesting stuff online,” Hensley said. “The stuff that is burning to be done right now, then see where it goes.”
He advised journalists to check their Twitter feed in the morning as it might give you story ideas.
“Twitter and Facebook can be a booster rocket to make a post go viral.” He added that it doesn’t always work but, if the post is interesting, it’s worth a shot. Hensley says that in addition to checking news sites, he always checks his personal Twitter feed - @scotthensley - as well as the NPR’s Twitter feed - @NPRhealth - to see what’s going on in the Twittersphere.
Ivan Oransky, treasurer of AHCJ’s board of directors, is the executive editor of Reuters Health and blogger for Retraction Watch and Embargo Watch. He joined the blogosphere in 2006 for The Scientist. Oransky says that search engine optimization (SEO) is key for any blogger. If you have a subject you are covering, be sure to use key words that will attract people.
“SEO, to me, means using key words where people that were interested in that subject would want to read about,” Oransky said.
Hospital association official confuses news reporting with lobbying
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hospitals
Blythe Bernhard and Jeremy Kohler have been writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Missouri hospitals’ unwillingness to publicly disclose medical errors.
So, when the St. Louis Metropolitan Hospital Council released a statement opposing public reporting of medical errors at hospitals, the reporters sent the statement to Missouri legislators and asked them for their comments.
I can only imagine the surprise Bernhard and Kohler felt when Daniel Landon, senior vice president of governmental relations for the Missouri Hospital Association, sent an e-mail to health professionals that characterized the reporters’ actions as coming “close to the definition of what constitutes lobbying, which is defined by the Missouri Ethics Commission and requires lobbyist registration.”
Landon said hospital association staff members planned to raise these concerns with legislators and had considered a complaint with the ethics commission.
“We think it is useful to put the Post-Dispatch on notice that someone is watching their actions in this regard,” Landon’s e-mail said. “Otherwise, the reporters will continue to push the envelope between reporting and promoting public policy changes to support their editorial positions.”
Another representative of the association later said the message was “regrettable.”
A Post-Dispatch editorial about the incident made clear to readers the difference between the editorial page and the news department, explaining that it “maintains strict church-state separation between the editorial page and the news department.”
When newspaper reporters or editorial writers communicate with legislators, we do so as journalists, acting in what we believe is the public interest. And regardless of whether public reporting of medical errors would serve hospitals’ interests, it clearly would serve the public interest.
Related
Kohler wrote an article for AHCJ about how he and Bernhard investigated medical errors and the lack of public information available to help consumers choose their health care providers: Public handicapped by lack of information on medical errors.
EWA winners include health-related stories
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The Education Writers Association announced the winners of the 2010 National Awards for Education Reporting yesterday. Since education and health frequently intersect, I took a look at the stories mentioned and found some worth pointing out.
- A special citation went to Courtney Cutright, of The Roanoke Times, for “Autism: Breaking Down the Barriers.”
- Rebecca Catalanello, of the St. Petersburg Times, also earned a special citation for “His pills cause her pain.”
- Ann Dornfeld, of KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio, received a special citation for “Recess Disparities in Seattle Public Schools.”
Related tip sheets
Health and education: Two intersecting beats
Health and education: Reporting resources
Ind. station runs ‘canned’ story about Fla. boy
Jeremy Cox, medical reporter for the Jacksonville (Fla.) Times-Union, calls our attention to a television report about a boy who suffered a stroke and needed a rare surgery to save his life.
The report, which aired Thursday on WNDU-South Bend, Ind., was produced by Ivanhoe Broadcast News, a media company based in the Orlando, Fla., area.
Cox reports that the story, as aired on WNDU, “features the station’s health logo, ‘Maureen’s Medical Moment,’ along with an introduction and voice-over by the reporter Maureen McFadden.”
Critics have raised questions about these so-called “canned” reports in the past, as Cox points out:
Eric Deggans, the television and media critic for the St. Petersburg Times, asked a poignant question about health journalism a couple years ago. Two, actually.
“As a TV viewer, how do you know when reporters are presenting their own work? And does it matter if the format subtly encourages the audience to think a journalist has done work he has not?” he inquired.
Those questions topped a column about local television news reporters’ habit of presenting health stories produced by someone else as their own work. Without giving credit to that “someone else.”
In a 2009 blog post, Gary Schwitzer, an AHCJ member and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, says that often stories produced in this way are “almost always about a single idea with one spokesman touting it.”
Certainly stories with a single source that lack independent analysis do not meet the standards set forth in AHCJ’s statement of principles, which calls for vigilance in selecting sources, recognition that most stories involve a degree of nuance and complexity that no single source could provide and seek out independent experts.
Doctor calls for principles in health reporting
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism
Nortin Hadler, M.D., in an opinion piece for ABC News, writes about his worries for health journalism. Hadler, who is on the advisory board for the health and medical journalism program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that health journalism is threatened more than other reporting specialties by the financial pressures the media industry is experiencing.
He points out that health reporting is a specialty in journalism and calls for appropriately trained, responsible health journalists. He points to AHCJ’s statement of principles and says living up to them is a “challenge that is met unevenly.”
Hadler expresses concern “about the decimation of the ranks of health journalists. I understand the appeal of ‘press releases’ and the greater appeal of such that accumulate on Web sites; convenience can unburden the journalists assigned to cover more than is possible and cost-effectiveness can unburden the publisher whose cash flow is so tenuous.”
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