Looking to fill what it feels are gaps in health coverage left by newsrooms slashing reporting staffs, the Kaiser Family Foundation will launch its promised news service in the first half of 2009. Kaiser Health News is expected to employ five to seven reporters, as well as freelance writers.
The service will be based at Kaiser's Washington, D.C., building and led by two veteran health journalists. Laurie McGinley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor, is the former deputy bureau chief for global economics and national health care policy correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. Peggy Girshman, an Emmy-winning editor and producer, is a former managing editor at National Public Radio and an executive editor at Congressional Quarterly.
As reported earlier this year, Kaiser says it plans to offer in-depth stories on developments in the health care system and on health care initiatives and debates in Washington and in state capitals. Columns, video interviews, graphics, and multimedia features will supplement the stories.
Kaiser is a nonprofit, private operating foundation dedicated to producing and communicating information, research, and analysis on health issues. It plans to fund the news service on its own.
"We are committed to making KHN a unique home and distribution vehicle for the very best in-depth journalism on health issues, a place people and other news organizations can go for stories and the most important changes occurring in health care and often mind-numbingly complex health policy debates," said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based Kaiser Family Foundation.
"Journalists who work for KHN will have resources for research and travel to get out and cover stories where they are happening, and they will not have to compete with stories on other issues for space in the paper or time on air."
All news content will be available for free on a new Web site, www.kaiserhealthnews.org. KHN says it will also enter into partnerships with news organizations to jointly produce and publish articles, and wants to syndicate material as well.
The news service is the latest effort by a private foundation to step into the news hole left by the downsizing news organizations. ProPublica, funded by the Sandler Foundation, hired 19 reporters this year to conduct investigative journalism in a variety of areas, including health. It allows news outlets to run its stories free of charge and offers its news on its own Web site. Florida Health News, funded by several Florida health foundations, was launched about a year ago to cover health issues and link to stories written by newspapers across the state. Florida Health News has one full-time staffer and uses freelancers to provide original stories. The Kansas Health Institute's News Service began in January 2007 and has four full-time reporters at its headquarters in Topeka. Its Web site features its own stories and highlights health stories done by other media organizations.
"The nonprofit sector can play a unique role in making sure that the public has continued access to in-depth reporting on complex policy issue," said Matt James, the Kaiser Family Foundation's senior vice president for media and public education. James will have responsibility for KHN. "And it is our hope to do just that in the area of health care, an issue that affects everyone."
McGinley, who was part of a Wall Street Journal reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for AIDS coverage, said: "Our goal is to increase understanding of complicated issues by producing accurate, detailed and timely stories."
