By Phil Galewitz
From the Spring 2007 issue of HealthBeat
Ed Silverman rarely goes into the newsroom anymore. He doesn't send his stories to an editor when they're done. And his work day is anything but 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Silverman, who has covered the pharmaceutical beat for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., for a dozen years, is a new breed of big city health reporter.
Since January, he's become a fulltime Web blogger for the newspaper.
Ed Silverman
What's different about Silverman's blog is that it's not on the Star-Ledger's Web site.
Rather, the newspaper has established a Web site for its drug blog at www.pharmalot.com.
"This is an experiment," Silverman says. He came up with the idea for the full-time blog about 18 months ago. The site is designed more for people working in the industry rather than consumers who are the end users.
"The idea is that the Ledger has a unique vantage point and is physically located in the midst of the huge global drugs industry and covers it like others don't," Silverman says. The Star-Ledger doesn't just cover pharmaceuticals as a national story, but as a local story because of the thousands of employees working for drug companies in New Jersey.
Silverman could afford to step away from the print edition because the newspaper has three other writers who cover the pharmaceutical beat.
The Web site, which does not yet have any advertising, keeps a running stream of headlines to give users the news of the day. It also has a list of blog posts from Silverman and a place for readers to add their comments. Silverman makes as many as 10 posts a day to the site.
In April, pharmalot.com was among the first sites to post a quote from an AstraZeneca newsletter that "There's is a big pot of money in every doctor's office." The company sales manager who made the quote was fired a day later.
"We want to be in the top sites for where people go to when they want the latest news on the drug industry," Silverman says.
The reason behind setting up a separate Web site for the drug blog was to help readers find it more quickly, he said. On many newspaper Web sites, finding a blog involves several clicks.
Silverman says it is gratifying to try something new after doing the same job for the past dozen years. While he enjoys the additional freedom of the Web life affords, it also has its challenges. "The downside is I am working at it 14 hours a day, and it's a bit of a treadmill."
Part of the challenge is that there are drug companies across the globe, so the news doesn't stop at 5 p.m.
Silverman posts his blogs on his own, though editors see them once posted. "They trust me," he says of posting before getting each item cleared by an editor.
Silverman works from his Milburn, N.J., home where he lives with his wife and three children ages 4, 11 and 15.
Because of the demands of the Web site, Silverman doesn't meet with sources as much as he used to. But he hopes to stay in the loop.
During a recent lunch with a source, Silverman had to break away twice to use his laptop to post to his blog.
The Star-Ledger launched the Web site during a period of budget crunching at most newspapers. With the Web site, there's only room to grow. "It's a great opportunity," Silverman says.
Phil Galewitz is editor of HealthBeat and a health writer for The Palm Beach Post.
