Career Development : Calendar

Tech Tools for Health Reporters

02/24/09     San Francisco, CA

Where: CMP Medica, 600 Harrison St., San Francisco

When: 6- 8 p.m., Feb. 24

Light refreshments will be served
This event is free; please RSVP to Colleen Paretty: cparetty@pobox.com or 510-703-1816.

Whether you're a staff reporter or freelancer, you've undoubtedly heard that to survive in the media in the future, you'll need to blog, podcast, and Twitter. A few writers have become conversant in online technologies and are using them to the benefit of their careers. Many of the rest of us, though, may have experimented with a blog or used Facebook to find sources for a story, but are still waiting to see how the digital revolution is really going to help our work lives.

We'll explore this question with a panel of folks who are using online technology or helping others to do so.

Amy Tenderich, author, Diabetes Mine blog, and a San Francisco-based writer and consultant diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2003. She's using the blog as an outlet for what she's learned about the disease and a way to help others. Her blog is chock full of information, colorful and graphic-laden and includes advertising. We'll learn more about how she developed the blog and how it fits into her career goals as a writer.

Jerry Monti, technology training instructor for UC Berkeley's Knight Digital Media Center, will discuss how journalists can and should be using online technology to further their work.

Moderator: Jan Greene is a longtime health care freelancer who has been waiting for her blog (www.healthplanconsumer.com) to catch fire and ignite her career. Jan, based in Alameda, has a daily newspaper background and writes for health care-related trade and consumer magazines and newspapers.