Who's hiring now?
See job listings on the AHCJ site.
By Barbara Feder Ostrov
San Jose Mercury News
Like everyone else in my newsroom, I was stunned when I heard the news from my editor the day before she was to return after a year-long journalism fellowship – and the day brutal layoffs were scheduled at the San Jose Mercury News.
"I'm leaving the Merc for a start-up," she told me. "I can't say much about it yet, because we're in stealth mode, but I'm really excited about it.''
After 15 years in newspaper journalism, former science and health editor Elizabeth Howton happily traded her newsroom cubicle for a window office at Navigenics, a well-financed consumer genetic testing startup in the San Francisco Bay Area. As senior editor responsible for creating consumer-focused health content, she answers to a vice president of editorial who also is a veteran science journalist.
"I was always resistant to going online, but having the fellowship year opened my mind to other possibilities,'' says Howton, who was approached by a recruiter about the job. "It was a combination of a great opportunity at the right moment and a pretty difficult situation at the newspaper. When I compared my newspaper, which had been sold twice during time I was on leave, and a startup that was very well funded by a highly regarded venture capital firm, I didn't feel there was a big differential in job security.''
With the explosion of health Internet sites such as Revolution Health, WebMD and Daily Strength, it isn't surprising that many health journalists, squeezed by mainstream media budget cutting, are contemplating similar moves.
The opportunities can be enticing for journalists at all stages of their careers, but caveat emptor: For every well-paying job with a well-established health site, there are dozens more offering skimpy compensation, unstable freelance gigs and sometimes questionable content.
Men's Health magazine is looking for a managing editor of its Web site, ideally someone with five-plus years of online publishing experience who has logged time writing or editing health stories. Sounds great, right?
On the other hand, consider this recent job listing on a journalism job board:
"Medical Tourism & Dental Tourism site is seeking students to help create large volumes of blogging and article content. If you know about medical tourism in countries like India, Thailand, or Argentina, we can use your services. Each 300-word article pays $5, but you'll receive journalistic credit."
A quick review of the site reveals poorly written advertorials and no bylines.
Fewer online health sites than you might think need original content. Many aggregate content from providers such as A.D.A.M. Inc., a medical publisher. So the competition for decent jobs or freelance gigs can be intense.
Michael McCurdy, founder and publisher of HealthNewsDigest.com, says he gets up to five queries a week from journalists seeking work. "This week we got calls from a well-known TV reporter and a major magazine editor,'' McCurdy says. "If we had a bigger budget, we'd be hiring."
McCurdy contracts with five columnists, typically paying $500 for each weekly column. He also selects and edits about 15 items drawn from the 1,000 press releases his site receives each day. "We're an aggregator of news. We don't have a great need for original stories. There are no unions, it's all freelance, and I prefer that.," McCurdy says. "It's just a totally different world."
In this brave new world, journalists aren't just competing against each other, as they would for a traditional media job. They are up against patient-bloggers, medical professionals with a yen to write, and recent grads with highly advanced Web skills who can work as online producers.
"You're competing with a lot of people who are passionate about it and would do it anyway," says Bill Allman, general manager and chief content/creative officer of Health Central Networks, which runs online health portals such as HealthCentral.com and a collection of disease-specific Web sites.
As a former science-health writer and editor for U.S. News & World Report, Allman likes to hire journalists, but he warns prospective employees that the work is very different from what they're used to. "It's not a writer's job," he says. "If you're looking for bylines, we're not the best place for you."
Allman employs writers and bloggers on a contract basis, including former Washington Post editor and ex-Revolution Health editorial director Craig Stoltz, who blogs on a number of Health Central's niche sites.
But the majority of his full-time, permanent jobs are for online producers who manage such sites as MyDiabetesCentral.com and OurAlzheimers.com – jobs that don't typically require reporting and writing. The jobs pay in the $50,000 range.
The producers tend to be young and energetic, with some just out of college, and, Allman says, "they have to know what good writing, video and photographs look like, but not create it."
They don't have to program, because Health Central has technicians who do HTML coding and video editing, Allman says. "They do have to be comfortable with a two-way dialogue with input from patients and bloggers, not the one-way information that flows from the mainstream media. They're building a community, not just a magazine."
J. C. Jones, a senior clinical editor for Healthline.com, relishes that dialogue, but she has no formal journalism experience. Armed instead with a nursing degree and a master's in international health, Jones writes 10 to 12 consumer newsletters a month on topics such as diabetes, in addition to blogging on medical topics that pique her interest.
While Healthline will soon be looking for freelancers to create additional consumer health content, it employs no journalists on its staff. The company purchases health news and other content from other providers rather than creating it from scratch. "We're not doing any news reporting on the site," Jones says.
Jayne Garrison, a veteran San Francisco Bay Area health reporter and editor, now works for WebMD as its executive editor of special sections. Her advice for journalists considering a transition to online?
Decide if you're comfortable with the freelance lifestyle, she says, because permanent, full-time writing and editing jobs at the consumer sites are relatively rare.
WebMD, one of the best-established consumer health sites, only employs three full-time staff writers, four full-time editors and three doctors who do medical editing and review articles for accuracy, Garrison says.
Journalists might also consider working for more specialized sites maintained by the American Cancer Society, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, hospitals, or other nonprofit and government organizations.
Would-be writers and editors also need to shift from traditional news pyramid and feature writing styles towards the kind of fare needed by sites fueled by search engine optimization and busy consumers who want easy-to-understand, accurate and actionable health information.
"The fact is, when people go to Internet," Garrison says, "they're not curling up on the couch with the information."
Barbara Feder Ostrov covers health and medicine for the San Jose Mercury News. Contact her at bfeder@mercurynews.com.
