The COVID-19 reporter’s essential toolkit

By Bara Vaida

Whether you are new to covering COVID-19 or are just looking for a new resource, AHCJ can help with a list of 10 things to know to help you get up to speed. We will continue to update this list monthly as this health story evolves.

10 key terms

One of the challenging aspects of covering health care in general is translating medical and science jargon, sometimes based on terms with changing meanings. This has been especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when almost every reporter — including journalists who haven’t traditionally covered health and science — has had to try to learn the vocabulary of infectious diseases and viruses. Sometimes the efforts to explain terms has led to confusion.

“By now a lot of our pandemic verbiage has been misconstrued,” wrote the Atlantic’s Katherine Wu, on terms that the public has struggled to understand.

Here are 10 terms and what they really mean so you can be alert to them and help the public by explaining them as accurately and simply to readers as possible.

1. Asymptomatic carrier
2. Breakthrough infection
3. COVID-19 infection
4. Fully vaccinated
5. Isolation
6. Mild COVID-19
7. Natural immunity
8. Quarantine
9. Vaccine effectiveness
10. Vaccine efficacy

For additional concepts and terms, see AHCJ’s COVID-19 glossary and concepts, another produced by WebMD, and this one by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

10 email lists and listservs

In addition to AHCJ’s daily email, there are other email newsletter subscriptions and listservs that are good sources of information and inspiration for story ideas during the pandemic.

1. Al Tompkins/Covering COVID-19 – A daily coronavirus briefing from the Poynter Institute.
2. Axios Vitals – An excellent daily email from journalist Tina Reed that includes a mix of federal policy health news, and often an important breaking COVID-19 story.
3. Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy – The University of Minnesota’s daily email with news about COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
4. COVID-19 Data Dispatch – A weekly email from journalist Betsy Ladyzhetz (who likes to call herself your local, angry data nerd) of both reported (by her?) COVID-19 stories and a round-up other articles worth reading on data and other topics.
5. Eureka Alert! – A daily email produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences that highlights new COVID-19 research studies.
6. The Journalists Resource – The Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Politics’ newsletter that often includes COVID-19 tip sheets and story ideas.
7. Mara Aspinall’s COVID-19 Weekly Testing newsletter, produced by an Arizona State University biomedical diagnostics professor of practice.
8. National Association of Science Writers – A COVID-19 discussion list for journalists who want to share information and provide support.
9. USC/Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s twice weekly email
10. Your Local Epidemiologist – An excellent newsletter published through Substack by Katelyn Jetelina, a University of Texas Health Science Center epidemiologist, which provides insight on a variety of COVID-19 topics.

10 journalists to follow on Twitter for COVID-19 coverage

Since the beginning of the pandemic, news has changed daily, if not hourly. Twitter more than ever has become a place for journalists to find sources and scientists to connect with to stay on top of the news. To get a sense of what is happening, follow these journalists and look at their Twitter lists, which usually include the most important COVID-19 experts sharing information on social media.

1. Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell)
2. Caroline Chen (@carolineLYChen)
3. Maggie Fox (@maggiemfox)
4. Tara Haelle (@tarahaelle)
5. Apoorva Mandavilli (@apoorva_Nyc)
6. Maryn McKenna (@marynmck)
7. Lena Sun (@bylenasun)
8. Bara Vaida (barav) and her Twitter list
9. Katherine Wu (@katherinejwu)
10. Ed Yong (@edyong209)

10 data sources

Data is key for finding stories, but journalists have faced serious challenges in obtaining accurate sources of it throughout the pandemic, as there is no federal standard for collection of health data. Each state has its own data collection policy and the ultimate say in what data to collect, which means we have a spotty picture of the pandemic. Fortunately, several academic and private organizations have stepped into the void to help journalists find and sift through data.

Here are some good data sources, both from the public and private sector.

1. The Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center, one of the earliest and most respected tracking services on the pandemic.
2. The CDC’s COVID-19 data site.
3. Kaiser Family Foundation’s COVID-19 state data and policy tracker.
4. Global.health, a COVID-19 dataset with 50 million anonymized cases from 100 countries.
5. Morehouse School of Medicine’s COVID-19 demographic tracker, which tracks racial impacts of the pandemic.
6. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Protect Public Data Hub, a centralized location of HHS COVID-19 data.
7. COVID-19 Data Dispatch, created by a data journalist and chock full of COVID-19 data sources, including data on schools and states.
8. COVID Act Now – a transmission risk and vaccination map created by a nonprofit group of technologists and epidemiologists.
9. COVID-19 Projections – the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation models of cases and deaths in the U.S. and globally.
10. COVID-19 Case Mapper – case data for any state or county, created by Stanford University for journalists.

Go-to experts

When new to covering a disease outbreak, especially an evolving one like COVID-19, it is essential to find the right experts for the story you’re writing. Quoting an expert who appears authoritative and has experience in epidemiology or disease in general but isn’t an expert in infectious disease, raises the risk that you will report inaccurate or misleading information.

How can you find the right experts? Begin with reading: “Tips on finding and vetting experts during a disease outbreak” and scroll through this AHCJ tip sheet to find suggested experts.

Check out:

• Medium’s vetted list of 50 COVID-19 experts (though the list is from 2020, the experts are still relevant)
• the Open Notebook’s list of diverse sources for science stories;
• SciLine, a unit of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, run by a former Washington Post journalist, whose goal is to help journalists to find sources for their COVID-19 stories.

COVID-19 pandemic timeline

This timeline, produced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s David. J. Sencor museum, walks through the significant moments in the pandemic between December 12, 2019, and April 21, 2021.

Must-reads about COVID-19

1. Long-haulers are redefining COVID-19 and COVID-19 Long-haulers are fighting for their future (The Atlantic) Two stories by journalist Ed Yong about the long-term symptoms of COVID-19. He helped to define the syndrome that is now a hallmark of the disease and has helped to keep it in the public eye.

2. The 60-year-old scientific screwup that helped Covid kill (Wired) A story about where the 6-foot social distancing standard came from and why it is likely incorrect, especially when it comes to COVID-19.

3. The story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the Covid vaccine race. (STAT and the Boston Globe) The story behind the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

4. COVID-19 pandemic reporting by Katherine Eban – This independent investigative journalist has continually broken stories about what’s happening behind the scenes at federal agencies – from the Trump administration’s decision not to roll out national COVID-19 testing to the micromanaging and mistrust that has hobbled the Biden administration’s global vaccine push.

5. Immunology is where intuition goes to die – (The Atlantic) Journalist Ed Yong’s story provides one the best and easiest ways to understand how the immune system works and how COVID-19 has been able to evade it.

5 mental health resources for journalists

The pandemic is both a professional and personal experience for health care journalists. Almost every reporter has experienced stress, fatigue, anxiety and burnout, as well as loneliness, grief and anger. Some have also lost family members and colleagues to COVID-19. So, if this is you, you aren’t alone, and if you are new to this beat, know that caring for your mental health is likely to help you to professionally in the long term. Here are some resources to get you started.

1. Make it stop: Reporter burnout and the endless pandemic (AHCJ) – See this September 2021 webcast with journalists and a Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma psychologist on tips for staying psychologically healthy while staying on top of the story. Slides from the webcast with resources.

2. Self-care tips for journalists – plus a list of resources (The Journalist’s Resource)

3. Newsroom Mental Health Guide – produced by the Radio Television Digital News Organization. This is an excellent list of tools.

4. How journalists can fight stress from covering COVID-19: Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute offers nine tips for managing stress.

5. Journalist trauma support network – A project of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma that offers resources for journalists to get help.

Five sources for fact-checking and combatting misinformation/disinformation

1. Fighting the infodemic – The #coronavirusfacts alliance – Led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute, which unites 100 fact-checkers from around the world to share and translate facts surrounding the pandemic.

2. Politifact – coronavirus – The Poynter Institute’s political fact-checking organization regularly looks into specific false coronavirus claims on social media.

3. FirstDraft – A network of journalists that investigate and verify emerging stories.

4. Center for Countering Digital Hate – A nonprofit group seeking to disrupt online misinformation. They published a ground-breaking report – “The Disinformation Dozen” showing how just 12 anti-vaxxers are responsible for most misinformation online.

5. Medium/Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab – A collaborative effort between Medium and a U.S.-based global policy think tank to expose and explain disinformation using open-source research.

Tips for covering research studies

• 5 common research designs: a primer for journalists – This tip sheet explains the difference between randomized, controlled and other types of clinical trials.
• Tips on covering preprints about coronavirus research – AHCJ’s Tara Haelle walks you through important points when writing about research that has yet to move through the peer-review process.
• How to read a scientific paper – If you are new to covering research, this Open Notebook tip sheet offers guidance on analyzing a study.
• Spotting Shady Statistics – The Open Notebook also provides guidance on how to look for red flags in research reports.
• Covering medical research: a guide for reporting on studies – Written for AHCJ by former journalist Gary Schweitzer and associate professor in public health at University of Minnesota.