In a report on the status and health of American journalism, the Project for Excellence in Journalism revealed that health care press coverage over the past two years has totaled six tenths of a percent. That’s right, not even a full one percent. Apparently, health care has had trouble getting its fair share of press coverage due to racier headlines like the economy, the pecking order of prominent Republicans, the latest celebrity scandal, etc.
Health care was finally in the news on March 5, when President Obama hosted a health care summit to address what many recognize as an enormous problem in America. Even so, the coverage paled when compared to that of the financial crisis, and according to the article, the summit generated about half the attention created by the debate over who is leading the Republican Party.
That’s something we all need to know right now, isn’t it?
A couple of weeks ago, Time Magazine did a big story on peanut allergies. This week, NPR aired a few stories on AIDS, and I guess both of these topics could be considered “sexy” health care pieces, as opposed to a story on the sorry state of the American health care system.
As of October 2008, 46 million Americans, including 9 million children, were living without health care coverage. Ho hum, says the American press. Our system isn’t convenient either--on same day appointments, only 30 percent of Americans report that they can access a doctor on the day they need one as opposed to 55 percent of Germans. Boring, says the American press—give us something sensational to write about.
How about this? A friend of mine was recently admitted to Baptist Hospital for a routine appendix removal--too bad for her that it was the weekend, because Baptist doesn’t employ an on-call surgeon on the weekends. So, she waited in agony for Monday to come while getting sicker and sicker. By the time she was transferred to another hospital, which had only one on-call surgeon, she had to wait her turn. Meanwhile, her appendix had ruptured, necessitating the removal of most of her bowel and landing her in intensive care for a week. She almost died.
Maybe our new president can jump start some interest in health care with our press. Outside of what Bernie Madoff and AIG executives did, I think health care is the biggest scandal currently taking place in our country.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Community Newspaper Makes Light of Fowl Fury
The news industry isn’t all that glamorous for everyone, especially if you happen to get a job with your local, community newspaper. It must be hard to feel inspired writing about broken water mains, so when a piece shows up in print that takes an ordinary event, mixes it with humor and manages to stay within newspaper parameters, it’s worthy of a second look.
On a lighter note this week, The Beaches Leader had been following a story involving the discovery by the Atlantic Beach Police of chickens in the front yard of a resident’s home (the online articles cited are dramatically reduced from the more descriptive print versions). This Atlantic Beach couple was trying to teach their daughter about responsibility and about being creative during a recession by using the chickens’ eggs for food. The reporter details how the family presented a slide show to city commissioners, explaining the benefits of “urban chickens,” in an attempt to bypass the ordinance banning livestock.
And before you laugh, there is a wealth of material out there about urban chickens—the article on transgender hens is especially enlightening.
The reporter straightforwardly goes on to say that the “chicken controversy” couldn’t be addressed initially because the ordinance prohibiting chickens was not on the commission’s agenda.
If this is the most controversial thing happening in Atlantic Beach, life is good.
Anyway, of course the inevitable happened, and the commission rejected the family’s request to keep the chickens. Did I mention that this involves just TWO chickens? While the reporter started off with a straight hard news lead, the headline for the print version read, “Clucks Out of Luck in AB.” The reporter quoted Mayor John Meserve as saying, “We can’t see a way to do it, that it won’t create a mess.” Ok, a bureaucratic mess or a literal mess?
Then the reporter probably skipped a few "in-between" quotes from Meserve and ended with, “I don’t know if people thought about what would happen if people don’t take care of chickens properly.”
Whoa! I had not thought about that! Something worse than Iraq?
It’s good to know that even if you work for a weekly paper, there’s still some fun to be had as long as style rules aren’t bent to breaking. The value of interjecting humor in print is not just for entertainment but also for humility, to keep us laughing at ourselves. Here's a nod to The Leader for giving me my laugh of the week.
On a lighter note this week, The Beaches Leader had been following a story involving the discovery by the Atlantic Beach Police of chickens in the front yard of a resident’s home (the online articles cited are dramatically reduced from the more descriptive print versions). This Atlantic Beach couple was trying to teach their daughter about responsibility and about being creative during a recession by using the chickens’ eggs for food. The reporter details how the family presented a slide show to city commissioners, explaining the benefits of “urban chickens,” in an attempt to bypass the ordinance banning livestock.
And before you laugh, there is a wealth of material out there about urban chickens—the article on transgender hens is especially enlightening.
The reporter straightforwardly goes on to say that the “chicken controversy” couldn’t be addressed initially because the ordinance prohibiting chickens was not on the commission’s agenda.
If this is the most controversial thing happening in Atlantic Beach, life is good.
Anyway, of course the inevitable happened, and the commission rejected the family’s request to keep the chickens. Did I mention that this involves just TWO chickens? While the reporter started off with a straight hard news lead, the headline for the print version read, “Clucks Out of Luck in AB.” The reporter quoted Mayor John Meserve as saying, “We can’t see a way to do it, that it won’t create a mess.” Ok, a bureaucratic mess or a literal mess?
Then the reporter probably skipped a few "in-between" quotes from Meserve and ended with, “I don’t know if people thought about what would happen if people don’t take care of chickens properly.”
Whoa! I had not thought about that! Something worse than Iraq?
It’s good to know that even if you work for a weekly paper, there’s still some fun to be had as long as style rules aren’t bent to breaking. The value of interjecting humor in print is not just for entertainment but also for humility, to keep us laughing at ourselves. Here's a nod to The Leader for giving me my laugh of the week.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Is This the New Face of U.S. Journalism?
Can Alexander Heffner, a 19-year-old first-year undergraduate at Harvard transform the face of journalism for his generation?
This piece was a day brightener for me because a young person got involved in making the world a more informed place for people who have been largely ignored in previous elections. Last year, Heffner created an online magazine entitled Scoop08 that was exclusively written by 18-to-25 year olds, with a mission to bring a new generation to a better understanding of politics. According to the article, it became a national student online newspaper and caught the wave that carried Obama all the way to the White House.
This election answered the question for me, where are all the college students and why aren’t they voting? Apparently, the answer was that traditional news sources (television, magazines, newspapers) weren’t reaching this audience of Americans. So, this enterprising young man found a way to connect with a large group of people by using writers who could relate to this particular audience and placed the end result online.
And you saw the results in this past election—college students came out in droves to vote for the first time in ages. Politicians and traditional media outlets could hardly ignore the numbers of student voters exercising their political muscle and registering their mark as a voice to be reckoned with in the future.
Scoop08 has been reinvented as Scoop44, a daily online magazine designed to “serve as the distinct source of news affecting young Americans,” according to Heffner, who believes that there is a place for his magazine given the American press’s loss of credibility during the Bush administration.
My generation has left a truckload of unsolvable problems for the next group to deal with, and some of us, (myself excluded, of course), have voted out of ignorance and tradition rather than paying attention to the issues. Smart, young minds need to be involved, and more importantly, need to be informed in order to make wise political choices.
If online newsmagazines are the answer for reaching this new generation of voters, I’m all for it. If print newspapers want to stay in business, now is the time to get creative and stop doing “business as usual.”
This piece was a day brightener for me because a young person got involved in making the world a more informed place for people who have been largely ignored in previous elections. Last year, Heffner created an online magazine entitled Scoop08 that was exclusively written by 18-to-25 year olds, with a mission to bring a new generation to a better understanding of politics. According to the article, it became a national student online newspaper and caught the wave that carried Obama all the way to the White House.
This election answered the question for me, where are all the college students and why aren’t they voting? Apparently, the answer was that traditional news sources (television, magazines, newspapers) weren’t reaching this audience of Americans. So, this enterprising young man found a way to connect with a large group of people by using writers who could relate to this particular audience and placed the end result online.
And you saw the results in this past election—college students came out in droves to vote for the first time in ages. Politicians and traditional media outlets could hardly ignore the numbers of student voters exercising their political muscle and registering their mark as a voice to be reckoned with in the future.
Scoop08 has been reinvented as Scoop44, a daily online magazine designed to “serve as the distinct source of news affecting young Americans,” according to Heffner, who believes that there is a place for his magazine given the American press’s loss of credibility during the Bush administration.
My generation has left a truckload of unsolvable problems for the next group to deal with, and some of us, (myself excluded, of course), have voted out of ignorance and tradition rather than paying attention to the issues. Smart, young minds need to be involved, and more importantly, need to be informed in order to make wise political choices.
If online newsmagazines are the answer for reaching this new generation of voters, I’m all for it. If print newspapers want to stay in business, now is the time to get creative and stop doing “business as usual.”
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