Health care

Help readers make sense of food recalls

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 09, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Health care, Investigation, Personal finance, Private companies, Retail, Story ideas

You think Toyotas with rogue throttles are scary?
Try Pringles with salmonella.
Over the past few days news of another possibly widespread food recall has broken, and your readers will be wondering how it affects them. While you’re at it, you might want to develop a broader piece on food inspection, retail and restaurant inspection and other [...]

Kaiser steps in to fill gap left as beat reporters lose jobs

By Jennifer Johnson on Feb 18, 2010 in Health care, Jobs, Networking

As many news organizations continue to struggle, non-profit news services will increasingly be attempting to fill the information gap, says Matt James, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. James visited the Cronkite School Tuesday to speak to faculty and students about the foundation’s new non-profit Kaiser Health News (KHN) and the increasing role [...]

Finding stories inside drugstores and urgent care clinics

By Melissa Preddy on Feb 18, 2010 in Beats, Featured, Health care, Non-profits, Personal finance, Retail

It’s shaping up as a busy little week for merger and take-over bids in the retail industry. Following Simon Properties’ bid for rival mall-operator General Growth, we got word on Wednesday that Walgreen Co. wants to acquire New York’s Duane Reade pharmacy business.
Drugstore chains – especially the one-on-every-corner variety – may not seem like sexy [...]

Seattle Times reporter on ‘Seniors for Sale’ says shoot video on first interview

By Rosland Gammon on Feb 11, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Health care, Investigation

In the “Seniors for Sale,” series, Michael J. Berens of The Seattle Times writes about neglect in Washington’s adult family homes, which are private residences with caregivers. He says Washington state has moved hundreds of elderly into these for-profit enterprises from more expensive nursing homes.
His series includes video interviews with the distraught family members quoted in his articles. In [...]

Seattle Times’ ‘Seniors for Sale’ finds elder abuse by requesting manuals first

By Rosland Gammon on Feb 10, 2010 in Best Practices, Health care, Investigation, Story ideas

Michael J. Berens of The Seattle Times went inside the world of adult family homes to expose mistreatment and lax regulation. His “Seniors for Sale” series found that when people take seniors into their homes to earn money, “thousands of vulnerable adults have been exploited by profiteers or harmed by amateur caregivers.”
The online presentation has an effective, rotating selection of wrenching quotes, [...]

Reporter needed for biotech news site in New York

By Robin J Phillips on Feb 03, 2010 in Health care, Job listings, Jobs

GenomeWeb News is looking for a journalist to join its daily news team.
In their JournalismJobs.com job listing, editors asked for a motivated reporter with a few years experience who can write quickly and clearly about breaking news in the areas of

genomics,
biotech research,
molecular diagnostics,
and other related fields.

The beat they are hiring for will require a mix [...]

Nursing home ratings provide a great reader service

By Melissa Preddy on Feb 02, 2010 in Beats, Featured, Health care, Investigation, Personal finance, Story ideas

Nursing home care may not be as snazzy a topic as the Apple iPad or Toyota’s massive recall, but I guarantee that a story about nursing home quality rankings will grab your readers’ attention anyway.
Most of us know someone who’s needed nursing home care, and many more of us may be headed that way ourselves, [...]

Reporter checks sources’ responses for accuracy in controversial stem-cell story

By Rosland Gammon on Feb 02, 2010 in Best Practices, Health care, Investigation

Mark Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel does a thorough investigation of a Chinese company offering stem-cell treatments that aren’t available in the United States, questioning their effectiveness.

The story follows a Wisconsin family who paid $32,300 for the treatment to China, talks with experts that question the procedure and challenges assertions by the Chinese company, Beike [...]

State of the Union speech offers plenty of financial-news fodder

By Melissa Preddy on Jan 27, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Health care, Personal finance, Story ideas

Business journalists may want to take some time today to line up sources and story angles out of tonight’s State of the Union address by President Obama.
Sure, it’s primarily the purview of political writers and news desk denizens. But with echoes of “It’s the economy, stupid!” echoing around advance reports of this year’s [...]