Investigative reporting is not easy as a freelance journalist, but it’s not impossible either.
The Health Journalism 2019 session on investigative reporting for freelancers on Saturday revealed tips, resources and success stories to inspire freelancers to dig deeper into those suspicions they have about a story — and the hundreds or thousands of documents that it likely involves. Continue reading
An estimated 48 million Americans listen to podcasts weekly, according to a 2018 survey from Edison Research, with the average consumer listening to seven different podcasts a week. So, the time is ripe for you to set up a mic and start your own health care podcast.
On Thursday, the Health Journalism 2019 panel, “Health podcasting: How to turn your in-depth health story into an audio narrative or series,” taught attendees just exactly how to do that. Continue reading
Photo: kerolic via Flickr
Like many reporters, I have developed several niches in my reporting within medical research. I most often write about pediatrics, women’s health, mental health, vaccines, public health (including gun violence) and, increasingly, health disparities or related social justice aspects of health and medicine.
Because I try to include links throughout my writing to back up the figures I use to provide context on a topic, I would frequently find myself looking up the same data again and again. For topics like vaccines, it usually wasn’t too difficult to find studies or statistics I had previously cited. They were generally easy to find on the CDC website, or I could remember a couple key articles I’d written where I linked to the majority of the figures I might want to link to again. Continue reading
Photo: Matt Hintsa via Flickr
One challenge when covering medical conferences is that, depending on your publication’s needs, you often must conduct many interviews on the fly both with presenters and with attendees at the sessions.
Since many other people also are vying for the presenters’ attention, you might only be able to get in a few short questions after a session. Continue reading
Photo: Amy Kearns via Flickr
As I write this post, I can’t even recall what the most recent mass shooting was. I know it wasn’t the Pittsburgh synagogue because that’s been a few weeks, and then there was the one at a country music club in Thousand Oaks, Calif., that came after that not long after. (The later incident sticks out in my mind because one victim had earlier survived last year’s Las Vegas mass shooting, also during another country music concert.) Continue reading
Those of us who cover medical studies on a regular basis are always looking for ways to uncover new and interesting research aside from the embargoed releases from the major journals and services such as EurekAlert! Using alerts on PubMed is one option, and now there’s a new app called Case.
I first learned about the app in March when Avikk Ghose, Case’s CEO and co-founder, reached out to me on email. I checked out the app at the time but found some features limited for the way I specifically look for research. (Since it’s aimed at researchers themselves, it was at the time still too hyperspecific for me as a journalist.) Continue reading