1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
Good News About Cancer, by Susan Crandell, Julie Bain and Emily Chau.
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
May 10, 2010.
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
We wanted to do a cancer story that focused on the positive progress being made, telling real women's stories of hope and survival, commentary by top experts, and what looks promising for the future, too. We included stories of real women who have survived and thrived thanks to new targeted therapies. We talked to experts about the advances in new drugs and other treatments. We included a chart on declining cancer statistics with the help of the CDC; a sidebar on clinical trials, one on celebrity survivors, one on studies showing how humor and outlook can help survival, and one on potential new breakthroughs coming.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Our reporters researched extensively in medical journals, government websites and in medical statistics.
5. Explain types of human sources used.
We profiled women cancer survivors, including Noreen Fraser of Los Angeles, who's been living with breast cancer for nine years; Wendy Harpham of Dallas, who's been living with non-Hodgkin lymphoma for 19 years; and Virginia Garner of Claremont, California, who's been living with chronic myelogenous leukemia for 12 years. We photographed each woman and told her story in an unvarnished but inspiring way. We also used some celebrities to illustrate that many women are living longer with cancers that used to be considered a death sentence, from Kathy Bates to Christina Applegate (in sidebar on page 152). We also interviewed top cancer experts such as Paul Richardson, M.D. at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston; Allen S. Lichter, M.D., CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology; Michael Fisch, Ph.D., at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston; Larry Norton, medical director of breast cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City; and others. We also worked closely with the National Cancer Institute for accuracy and information, although they were not directly attributed.
6. Results (if any).
We did lots of cross-promoting of this story on lhj.com and through our lhjHealthLadies Twitter feed, and partnering with various cancer organizations, to drive traffic to our site and raise awareness.
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No corrections or clarifications needed.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
We felt the first draft of this story wasn't good enough–it didn't include enough real-women stories, ahead-of-the-curve thinking, coming breakthroughs or surprising sidebars. So our staff added those to create a well-balanced package. While it's very hard to cover breakthroughs and science in women's magazines, my advice is to keep pushing for it. We were happy to get our little breakthroughs sidebar in there, even though we did hours of interviews, transcripts and editing to get there. We worked very hard to make these tough subjects palatable.