- http://www.webmd.com/news/breaking-news/supreme-court-video
- http://www.webmd.com/news/breaking-news/supreme-court-guide
- http://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/rmq-health-reform
- http://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/20070305/health-care-reform-questions-and-answers
Provide names of other journalists involved.
Lisa Zamosky, Sandee Lamotte, Nancy LeBrun
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
Coverage launched March 19, 2012, with subsequent coverage throughout the year
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
How do you make a controversial Supreme Court case about a complex subject engaging for readers? That’s the challenge we gave ourselves as we prepared coverage of the Supreme Court hearings and decision on the Affordable Care Act. We know from reader surveys that readers still don’t understand the Health Policy law, let alone the detailed legal arguments about its provisions. Our goal was to help readers understand what was at stake and how it would impact them, with a “just the facts” approach free from the politics and gamesmanship. In preparing our special report, we offered several levels of coverage that relied on visuals and interaction, as opposed to text only. At the easiest level we featured a short video that used simple language and colorful graphics to explain this complicated subject in 90 seconds. (Note: We updated the video after the June decision, which extended the length to about 2 minutes). An interactive guide allowed users to focus more in-depth on key issues. We offered a quiz to help readers separate Health Policy myth from fact. We reported live from the hearings using social media. After the decision, we solicited reader questions and asked our health insurance blogger to answer them. We believe that this approach provided readers with comprehensive and engaging coverage, whether they needed a global or personal understanding of the issues at hand.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
We used government resources about the law to inform the coverage.
Explain types of human sources used.
We talked to a wide range of leaders in the field, including those with the government, the insurance industry, consumer advocates and consultants to gain a comprehensive understanding of the issues at stake.
Results:
We called Health Policy our top story of the year because readers were clearly interested and engaged. Our coverage throughout the year received hundreds of thousands of page views and millions of impressions on Twitter. Our call for questions after the decision netted more than 150 in several hours. Clearly readers want and need this type of information.
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.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Keep your readers in mind. Don’t try to impress them by using bureaucratic words and concepts. Translate what you know into simple language so readers have information they can truly understand and use. Challenge yourself to find engaging ways to present the information.