1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
"The Hunger Diaries" was pitched, written and reported for Marie Claire by Katie Drummond. Sophia Banay Moura edited the piece. It was top edited by Ying Chu (Marie Claire Beauty and Health Director), Anne Fulenwider (Executive Editor), and Joanna Coles.
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
"The Hunger Diaries" appeared in the November 2010 issue.
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
Eating disorders have a hold on our culture. And as social media and online forums proliferate, a community has emerged to support these disordered attitudes. Pro-anorexia web sites promote anorexia and bulimia with pictures of underweight models and tips on maintaining an ED lifestyle. In The Hunger Diaries, we set out to expose a newer, more subtle, and more insidious type of ED support: the "healthy living" community. This community of young female bloggers is led by a group known as the "big six." These six twenty-something professional women have hundreds of thousands of readers for their personal sites, where they post photos and descriptions of every meal they eat and share every nuance of their intense workouts. They run regular races, including marathons, or complete athletic feats like 100-mile bike races, despite recurring injuries. In addition to food photos, they share weight goals and diet tricks on their blogs. Due to their popularity, several major food and wellness companies have signed on to sponsor the women's sites and their annual "healthy living" conference, and several of the six bloggers have book deals. Though they present themselves as advocates for health and "balance," the bloggers' extreme approach to food and exercise alarmed us.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
The primary source material for the story was the online food diaries of the six bloggers themselves. We scoured their sites going back years for evidence of disordered behavior and attitudes toward eating and working out. We also looked at the sites of some of their acolytes and analyzed those for worrisome patterns.
5. Explain types of human sources used.
A group of nutritionists, physicians, professors and therapists, all with specialties in eating disorders and/or exercise addiction, was invaluable to the reporting of the story and the development of our thesis. Gathering the information the six bloggers shared about their heights and weights, calories consumed, and workouts completed, we polled 15 experts who bolstered our concerns about this community. We also reached into the community of bloggers themselves to get responses, speaking to blog sponsors, including spokespeople from Stonyfield Farm, Quaker Oats, and Bimbo Bakeries, as well as the editors of the bloggers' upcoming books. We talked to other health bloggers who'd had experiences, good and bad, within the community, and we solicited responses to our article from the six main bloggers themselves.
6. Results (if any).
Before our November issue even hit stands, a member of the healthy living community made a PDF of The Hunger Diaries and posted the article on her site. Within minutes it generated a firestorm on Twitter and our Facebook page. When we posted the piece on MarieClaire.com, it got 40,000 page views within hours. Our Facebook interactions around the piece numbered 1,678 that week–a 380% increase in activity. Many healthy living community members were enraged with our analysis, but others–as well as doctors and ED experts–wrote in to second our concern with these sites and reiterate how damaging they can be to women suffering from, or prone to, eating disorders. All six of the lead bloggers, as well as over 40 other healthy living blogs, posted long responses to our article and whether the reaction it spawned was justified or not. National forums including Mediabistro.com's Fishbowl blog and the Orlando Sentinel picked up the story. Two reader reactions, reprinted in our January issue, offer varied perspectives on the debate: "I was overweight, inactive, and unhealthy until I found healthy living blogs. They inspired me to do things I never thought possible, including running a half-marathon." "I am recovering from anorexia and bulimia, and have stopped reading some of these blogs because I find them triggering. Thank you for shedding light on this topic."
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
The article generated such fierce controversy online that we created a Hunger Diaries Forum on our site where readers could chime in. The month after the piece was published, Mary Ellen Crowley, a psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School, cited our article in her presentation on Treating Eating Disorders in the Age of Internet, at a conference on Eating Disorders: Recent Advances, Current Trends, and Future Challenges. Dr. Crowley called our article "fantastic and brave" while describing the new healthy eating sites as "pernicious," and encouraged other doctors to post on our forum.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
As we learned from the explosive reaction to our piece, anyone profiling members of a tight-knit online community should be prepared for an engaged and well-coordinated response.