Welcome to AHCJ’s newest members
Please welcome AHCJ’s newest members and, if you haven’t already, consider following them on Twitter. All new AHCJ members are welcome to stop by this post’s comment section to introduce themselves.
- Nadia Al-Samarrie, editor in chief, Diabetes Health Magazine, Novato, Calif.
- Evan Belanger, reporter, Birmingham Business Journal, Birmingham, Ala. (@evanbelanger)
- Scott Dance, reporter, Baltimore Business Journal, Baltimore (@ssdance)
- Jason deBruyn, reporter, Triangle Business Journal, Raleigh/Durham, N.C.
- Jerry DeMink, executive video producer, WebMD, Atlanta
- Mercy Edionwe, freelance producer, Tucson, Ariz.
- Becky Ellis, senior editor, WebMD, Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Laura Englehart, reporter, Dayton Business Journal, Dayton, Ohio (@englehlp)
- Gisele Grayson, producer, National Public Radio, Washington, D.C. (@ggrayson)
- Katharine Grayson, reporter, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.
- Ashley Gurbal Kritzer, reporter, Jacksonville Business Journal, Jacksonville, Fla.
- Kevin Lomanngino, independent journalist, South Portland, Maine (@klomangino)
- Lisa Peters, student, Johannesburg, South Africa
- Ed Sealover, reporter, Denver Business Journal, Denver
- Chris Silva, reporter, Nashville Business Journal, Nashville, Tenn.
- Chad Terhune, independent journalist, Eastpoint, Fla.
- Dave Twiddy, reporter, Kansas City Business Journal, Kansas City, Mo. (@dtwiddy71)
- Tom Wilemon, reporter, The Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn. (@TomWilemon)
- Anna Yukhananov, health & drug policy reporter, Reuters, Washington, D.C. (@AnnaHealth)
- Sandra Zaragoza, reporter, Austin Business Journal, Austin, Texas (@ZaragozaAustin)
If you haven’t joined yet, see what member benefits you’re missing out on: Access to more than 50 journals and databases, tip sheets and articles from your colleagues on how they’ve reported stories, conferences, workshops, online training, reporting guides and more. Join AHCJ today to get a wealth of support and tools to help you.
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.
Social media takes over ScienceWriters 2009
Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, Robin Lloyd and Cristine Russell tell an increasingly familiar story: Twitter and friends take over a journalism conference, overwhelm the audience at first and eventually convert them to the social media gospel. This time around, at ScienceWriters 2009, a few interesting wrinkles emerged.
A taxonomy of social bookmarking: “Digg.com operates like a gang, Harris said, with stories or links nominated by super-users tending to rise in the ranks; meanwhile Reddit.com is like an “ADHD direct democracy” in which any link can make it to the top rankings, but popular links turn over rapidly.”
A new program tells you which conference tweets to care about: “One innovative new Twitter tool that Purdue University researchers unveiled earlier this month was made available for use at ScienceWriters 2009. Designed to help make sense of the wave of Twitter traffic at a meeting or conference, a new site called Need4Feed sorts through the tweets at a meeting and builds a popularity ranking to identify those with the broadest appeal. Developer Kyle Bowen, director of informatics at Purdue, said in a university press release that ‘Need4Feed lets conference goers sift through the noise to find the important things being said.’”
Oransky on H1N1, pandemic, vaccination and 1976
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public health
AHCJ board member Ivan Oransky appeared on Brian Lehrer Live to discuss H1N1. The relevant segment starts at about 38:50 into the show.
Among the issues discussed:
- Why H1N1 is a “pandemic,” what that really means, and how the designation has affected the public perception of the outbreak.
- The effectiveness of the widespread adoption of hand sanitizers, especially in the context of flu and other viral outbreaks.
- Vaccination and the lessons/relevance of the 1976 swine flu “outbreak,” in which the vaccine turned out to be more dangerous than the actual flu.
- The level of immunity created by the first wave of H1N1 earlier this year.
- Media behavior during this outbreak, and the media’s responsibility to communicate as much information as possible without being “sensationalist.”
Pfizer tentatively tackles tweets
James Chase reports in Medical Marketing & Media that Pfizer has opened a Twitter account, @pfizer_news. The pharmaceutical behemoth will use the microblogging service for interacting and opening dialog with customers, rather than for product promotion or advertising, Chase reports. While Pfizer has been monitoring Twitter for months, executives were afraid to engage directly for fear that they would be “ripped to shreds” by the Twitterati.
“We’re trying to become transparent, but we’re doing it slowly and cautiously,” said (Ray Kerins, VP worldwide communications). “For us to jump in with two feet would be stupid. The first task was to get the communications team cleaned up because we’ve had a bad rap in that area.”
Pfizer hopes to increase its social media presence, but plans to do so cautiously and in gradual steps.
For now, Pfizer’s media relations team is charged with controlling all corporate tweeting, but Kerins said he hopes to expand the pool soon. “I would love to have by the end of the summer 100 people, from medical to public affairs, who have been anointed by the company and who can go out and Twitter.”
As of Monday morning (July 27), @Pfizer_News had gained 565 followers and was in turn following 225 users, many of them major media outlets.
Hospitals harness social media
Jackie Fox writes in the Omaha World-Herald about local institutions’ use of social media to reach out to consumers and to provide information in the formats and locations in which consumers are likely to look.
One institution views social media as a customer service, providing patients with blogs they can use to share health updates with family and friends. Some find and reply to relevant blog posts or tweets.
Others, such as the Nebraska Medical Center, post videos on YouTube of treatments or procedures.
“It’s a good educational tool for procedures people may not be familiar with. People may decide this is someone they’d like an appointment with, or doctors in other parts of the state learn they can send patients to a specialist closer to home,” [media relations lead Paul ]Baltes said.
Journal spotlights science journalism
The latest issue of Nature explores the present and future of the relationship between media and science. Coverage includes balanced and constructive critiques of social media and journalists who aren’t themselves scientists as well as some obligatory questioning of the future of journalism as an industry.
In one article, Geoff Brumfiel details the rising role of Twitter-style social media in chronicling and commenting upon scientific conferences, saying that while providing for open and easy exchange of information, it also blurs the line between scientist and journalist. Additionally, the instantaneous and far-reaching broadcast of ideas makes competitive researchers even warier of revealing groundbreaking findings at conferences, on the grounds that they may then be snatched by any rival with Web access.
In another piece, journalist Toby Murcott questions the efficacy of press release-based science journalism and calls for reporters learn the expertise necessary to understand the fields on which they are reporting, and for journals to publish review comments that will provide more context for each article.
In a more focused editorial, Nature calls attention to tuberculosis and suggests that TB sufferers and researchers need to follow the example of AIDS and “capture the world’s imagination and support” by reaching out and finding “highly effective champions.” Globally, 9 million people develop active cases of TB each year.
Other pieces that may be of interest to health journalists:
- Editorial: Cheerleader or watchdog? – Science journalism is under threat. What can scientists do to help?
- Boyce Rensberger tracks the progression of scientific correspondents from cheerleaders to watchdogs.
- Editorial: Raising the standards – A fledgling effort in China will show people what is happening on the environmental front.
- The Arab boom – As research increases in Arab countries, the media is stepping up to report on it. Nadia El-Awady says the local journalism has much room for improvement.
- From the newsroom – The Washington Post’s national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin and its executive editor Marcus Brauchli discuss the future of science coverage in their newspaper.
Obama to answer videos, tweets on Wednesday
At 1:15 ET on Wednesday, President Barack Obama will answer questions about health care reform at a live, online town-hall meeting.
In a new wrinkle, the administration will consider questions submitted through several social media outlets:
- On YouTube, people can post brief video replies to Obama’s video invitation
- Twitter users can hashtag their questions with “#WHHCQ“
- On Facebook, people can visit the administration’s page and post their questions there
(Hat tip to Chicago Health Matters)
Why should reporters use Twitter? Read on …
Filed under: Health journalism, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline
By keeping track of area Twitter traffic, reporter Sarah Jane Tribble of the Cleveland Plain Dealer noticed that the Cleveland Clinic has tweeted almost 500 job openings despite an official hiring freeze. Tribble also took the opportunity to explain to readers the growing trend of Twitter-based job listings.
Selected tweets from @MargaretV, also known as Cleveland Clinic recruiter Margaret Vandervort.
Further south, Juana Summers of the Austin-American Statesman reports that Texas hospitals are getting into the act as well, with more than 75 folks attending a day-long summit on social media. Hospital representatives learned the basics of tweeting, poking and friending and got advice on navigating the legal minefield of social media.
AHCJ offers a number of resources for health reporters looking to plunge headlong into Twitter to catch the pulse of the community and interact with both readers and sources.
- Start with AHCJ’s introduction to Twitter for health journalists and our tip sheet on multimedia and social networking for journalists
- For those reluctant to get their feet wet, Mónica Guzmán’s AHCJ 2009 presentation on social networking tools for reporters (PDF) lets folks know exactly why Twitter’s awesome
- Take in the basics along with a few best practices with Guzmán’s tip sheet on journalists and social networking (PDF)
- AHCJ has also collected a range of relevant information at our online technology tip sheet
- And, finally, reporters from AHCJ’s San Francisco Bay Area Chapter will recognize the contents of this article on the digital revolution in health reporting
Wrestling with the FDA recall e-mail avalanche
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public health
NPR’s April Fulton recently blogged about a phenomenon familiar to anyone with a subscription to the FDA’s recall e-mail list, or their RSS feed, or their Twitter account: a late rush of random recall messages that would require a prohibitive amount of time to sort and research. 
For example, in a two-minute span on June 15, @FDArecalls on Twitter buzzed with messages about multivitamin labels, fish, organic chocolate peanuts, white peppers and soy sprouts. Fulton also notes that many of the notices come out late in the day.
She proposes some sort of flagging or rating system to make it easier to figure out which stories are big deals and which aren’t. She may be on to something. The FDA could make these releases more accessible and useful for journalists and consumers. At the very least, it should be possible to explain the location and magnitude of the public health danger in a way that could be understood at a glance.
What other tips or tricks help you figure out which recalls are relevant to your readers? Do you have suggestions as to how the FDA could makes its releases more accessible or useful? Let us know.
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