Melanie Evans has been covering hospitals for many years, including for Modern Healthcare and now The Wall Street Journal. But she was not an expert on cybersecurity when the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm began making its way through computer systems across the globe in May.
Evans eventually found a great and largely uncovered story about cyberattacks and the lack of public reporting disclosures at hospitals: “Why some of the worst cyberattacks in health care go unreported.”
“I wanted to keep track of how WannaCry hit U.S. hospitals, which is challenging because of limited public reporting by hospitals of cyberattacks,” she said.
Evans reached out to various sources for interviews, but when some of those did not pan out, she watched testimonies and panel discussions to fill in the gaps. She also wasn’t afraid to ask sources for resources to help her better understand the rapidly evolving issue of cybersecurity.
In a new How I Did It for AHCJ, Evans offers tips on how to give a unique angle to a story already receiving a lot of coverage, making it stand out from the crowd.
