Archive for the ‘Journalism’ Category

jseng
John
Seng

“Text Not Found”

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

That’s the message that popped up on screen this morning as I searched for the term “value” in Steven Pearlstein’s column on health reform as well as in the related commentary on “The Washington Post” Web site.

The reason no coherent health system exists, and the reason we spend so much on health is because Americans have no legitimate sense of health value.

We don’t know what health care truly costs us as individuals, and thus, we cannot begin to pretend that we value health in the strictest definition of “value.”

Not only do we need to talk about it – we need to study health value. As Congress and the Administration undertake health reform, what if they understood how Americans value health care when they consider their own money being spent? For the first time, policymakers could benefit from a true sense of value. “Budget scolders,” as Pearlstein describes them, could begin to make and enforce tough choices – the choices that Americans have already made in their minds in consideration of finite resources.

Last week, Spectrum released findings of the first, nationally representative study of its kind on health value, which will hopefully add to discussions in health reform: Visit www.healthvaluestudy.com.

Much of the information out there evaluates cost-effectiveness, e.g.  are we getting our money’s worth with any given procedure, technology, medication or program? But that’s overlooking a crucial insight: How do we really value health?

John Seng, Founder and President

Posted in Health Care Industry, Health Care Reform, Journalism, PR Industry
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Spectrum

The State of Health Journalism and the Digital Realm: Challenges and Opportunities

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

I recently attended a panel discussion at the National Press Club, titled “Using New Media to Promote Health & Medical News.” Although most of the presentations were interesting on a tactical level (Lee Aase of the Mayo Clinic and Sanjay Koyani, who manages FDA.gov and FDArecalls, are doing cool things online), the discussion itself was pretty straightforward and more geared for organizations not already immersed in digital technology – nothing wrong with that.

For me, though, the most significant takeaway was a report published by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), titled “The State of Health Journalism in the U.S.,” which was handed out prior to the discussion but wasn’t brought up, unfortunately. The report is based on a literature review of about 100 published pieces of research on health journalism, a survey conducted jointly by KFF and the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) and one-on-one interviews with more than 50 health journalists.

The report is essentially an extension of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2009 State of the News Media Report, but obviously more focused on health reporting. The findings in both reports aren’t extremely groundbreaking, but interesting and somewhat disconcerting nonetheless. According to the KFF-AHCJ report:

Interest in health news is as high as it’s ever been, but because the staff and resources available to cover this news have been slashed, the workload on remaining reporters has gone up. Many journalists are writing for multiple platforms, adding multimedia tasks to their workload, having to cover more beats, file more stories, and do it all quicker, in less space, and with fewer resources for training and travel. Demand for ‘quick hit’ stories has gone up, along with ‘news you can use’ and ‘hyper-local stories.’ As a result, many in the industry are worried about a loss of in-depth, enterprise and policy-related stories.

It’s true, as the U.S. faces significant health reform in the coming months and years, interest in health news and demand for thorough coverage of health policy will continue to increase substantially. The question is, how does the news industry respond in light of its current situation and/or has the “news hole” for health already been filled by talented bloggers like Maggie Mahar over at HealthBeat, Merrill Goozner at Gooznews and others?

The report also noted that although one of the major challenges facing health journalism is the importance of Internet publishing, digital technology has the “potential to expand the news hole for health exponentially and introduce a ‘golden age’ of health journalism, allowing for depth, scope and links that are not possible in other media” – as seen in the coverage by Mahar and Goozner, to name a few.

This is not to say that there aren’t challenges and consequences to publishing and exclusively consuming news online – that’s a whole other post, or two – however, I’m inclined to agree with the assertion that digital technology – and its ability to democratize news dissemination, publication and consumption – and bloggers like Mahar and Goozer will expand the reach of needed and wanted health news, benefiting health journalism in the long run. What do you think?

Chris Rottler, Digital Strategist & Account Executive

Posted in Health Care Reform, Health Policy, Journalism, New Media, Technology
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eanderson
Erica
Anderson

Digital Politics Takes Center Stage

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Yesterday I joined hundreds of others at the Politics Online Conference, or #POLC09, for short. The day was full of panels like, “What Effect Will the New Administration’s Use of Tech Have on Congress?” and “A Conversation with the Online Directors from the Obama and McCain Campaigns,” (which was totally heated – guess who was bitter?), as well as “Social Media Analytics: Monitor, Measure and Manage.”

All were excellent panels with talented individuals whom have adopted new media early on, taste makers and influencers – all discussing the implications and opportunities of the rapidly changing communications landscape. Either my Twitter application failed me or it was AT&T’s service, but I wasn’t able to tweet for most of the day. Although I couldn’t update Twitter, it was nice spending the afternoon listening. After all, that is one of the first rules of social media.

A few things for the Twitter 101 students – # indicates a hash tag – or something that users include in their updates. Hash tags come in all forms – for events like #POLC09, for fads such as #SusanBoyle and for sub cultures like #fem2.0. All the user needs to do is include their tag of choice in an update, and the tweet will funnel into a page where only tweets with that tag go.

Here are a few of my favorite tweets from the day.

#POLC09 Screen Grabs

#POLC09 Screen Grabs

Erica Anderson, Senior Digital Strategist

Posted in Congress, Journalism, Media Relations, New Media, Public Affairs, Tweets
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Spectrum

PR and Journalism, A New Age for PR Professionals

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Not to beat a dead horse (again), but newspapers are living through the “unthinkable scenario” where the future is uncertain. These unprecedented changes have raised a number of questions, some philosophical, others not so much. For PR pros, the question asked is more practical, do you want to keep your job?

As I write this, the New York Times – which itself is struggling to pay off its own debt – reported that the Sun-Times Media Group, which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times and operates 58 others, filed for bankruptcy protection. I’m not going to lie, I’m still horrified when I hear this type of news, but I’m becoming more desensitized to the situation. I think we all are. However, that doesn’t negate the fact that times are changing, industries are being restructured and the need to grow professionally is more important than ever.

Digital technology has changed the relationship between journalism and newspapers, but it also has changed the relationship between PR and journalism. The media skills to successfully compete yesterday, although still important, are not enough in today’s digital world.  Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge said it best in their new book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations (I haven’t read it in full, but so far so good):

Social Media is powerful. It is not only changing ‘the game,’ it is also inspiring everyone across every marketing discipline to evolve or quickly become victims of media ‘survival of the fittest.’ Some professionals will make it; some won’t. Others will get mired in researching ROI and reasons to justify whether there’s a business case to participate. Others will waste time questioning the viability of Social Media and the need to reform, while simultaneously the world advances around them. Unfortunately, the outcome will be the gradual obsolescence of many marketing departments and advertising and PR teams.

What does this mean for those in PR? Individuals need to internalize the urgency of the day and make personal investments to develop the skills necessary to compete in an ever-growing digital, participatory world. Otherwise, you risk becoming obsolete and in need of a new job.

Chris Rottler, Digital Strategist & Account Executive

Posted in Journalism, Media Relations, New Media, PR Industry, Technology
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eanderson
Erica
Anderson

Unthinking Television and Thinking Mobile

Monday, March 30th, 2009

On Thursday, I spoke on a roundtable at George Mason’s 6th Annual Visual Cultural Symposium. The topic this year was called “Unthinking Television,” and I was asked to discuss what “screen life” meant to me.

The other participants on the roundtable – including a video game producer and a social scientist of Second Life – came from diverse backgrounds, to say the least. I was there to speak about my experience as a mobile reporter for MTV’s Street Team ’08. (Read: Young Reporters, New Tools and Political Reporting in Harvard’s Neiman Report).

The question posed to the roundtable was this: What is screen life?

For me, when I hear the word “screen” I immediately think of the screens that I grew up with. First it was the television screen, and of course the big screen for movies. Now, in my early adulthood, it is the mobile screen that dominates my life.

Tomi T. Ahonen, a blogger for Communities Dominate Brands, recently created a comprehensive report on the impact of mobile. He offered this bit of information: the world population is 6.7 billion people. Four billion of which have phone subscriptions, which means over 60 percent of people in the world have access to a phone. Also, 17 percent, or about 680 million people, are subscribing to get news on their phone.

At the GOP National Convention last September, I had the opportunity test out this medium on the Convention floor. I was one of the only reporters on the floor with live mobile-to-web streaming capabilities. My impromptu broadcasts were met with confusion and curiosity. The reactions reflected the monumental brink – and shift in communications, that we are standing before.

So what is screen life? For one, mobile screens and technology provides us all with immediate connectivity – much more than sitting at a stationary computer because we are filming/tweeting/texting from locations beyond the console. The dawn of the World Wide Web was ground breaking because it allowed us to connect instantly to people with common interests. But as the phenomenon unfolded, internet users became immersed, perhaps to a fault, because many substituted internet interaction with real interaction. Now, with mobile tech and the traveling screen, I wonder how that connectivity and interaction will unfold, in a way that supports an informed society.

Erica Anderson, Senior Digital Strategist

Posted in Journalism, New Media, Technology
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Spectrum

Clay Shirky: Society Doesn’t Need Newspapers. What We Need is Journalism

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition Tuesday shifting entirely to the Web, Clay Shirky‘s recent post on the relationship between journalism and the newspaper industry, as well as the “revolution” that is taking place before our eyes, is more relevant than ever.

Shirky, an outspoken writer on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies recently wrote an articulate, clear and a substantive piece that I urge everyone to read in full. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts that summarize what I like to call the “Dark Age” of the newspaper industry:

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of its most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.[...]

When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

Shirky also discusses how both digital technology and the industry’s reluctance, or fear, to “think the unthinkable” scenario (i.e., that the ability to share content would not decline, but explode) has led to the crucible newspapers are about to pass.

As a former reporter myself, I look upon this “revolution” in awe, shock, frustration and excitement. I definitely hope the best for all the talented reporters on the cusp of losing their jobs, and those already forced to move on, but I am left anxious to see what comes out the other side of that crucible.

It is clear the relationship between journalism and newspapers is coming to an end – or at least as it has been manifested previously. No one knows which model will fill the void as the current system collapses, as Shirky suggests; however, I’m optimistic – call it blind – that the foundation of good journalism and the need for investigative reporting will survive the transformation, albeit a little more digital.

Chris Rottler, Digital Strategist & Account Executive

Posted in Journalism, New Media, Technology
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