Who will cover health issues if reporters are gone?

By Tim Collie
8/1/2008 © Florida Health News

Deep staffing cuts at newspapers across Florida are taking a toll on coverage of health issues at the very time it may be needed most: during an election year and a severe economic downturn.

Some longtime Florida health reporters, under the threat of layoffs, are taking buyout packages of a few months’ pay. Those who are left in newsrooms must contend with shrinking news holes and the necessity of covering multiple beats, which can force them to settle for quick-and-easy stories on topics like fitness routines and trends in cosmetic surgery.

Left uncovered, veteran reporters say, are demanding public health issues on access to care and how to finance it – issues that affect millions of Floridians, most acutely the working class, urban poor and uninsured. These are stories that require not only research and interview skills, but immersion in the minutiae of health policy.

“At one time the (South Florida Sun-Sentinel) Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post had something like six or seven health reporters,’’ said Post health-industry reporter Phil Galewitz, a board member for both Florida Health News and the Association of Health Care Journalists. “Now we’re down to two or three.”

Galewitz

Galewitz, who has 17 years’ experience and studied health policy as an undergraduate and at the master's level, has to juggle more stories now that the Post has no metro health reporter. “You can’t do more with less,’’ he said.

No other medium fills that gap. Newspapers, by far, have more journalists covering health issues than any other type of media organization, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Health care policy was among the top 10 most covered subjects in 2007, and newspapers stood out among all media for tackling those tough stories.

Many websites analyze national health policy, but there are few independent analysts, bloggers or citizen journalists examining health policy on the local, state or regional level. (Florida Health News is, of course, an exception.)

Compiling a comprehensive list of Florida health reporters who are leaving or being reassigned is tough; some declined to be interviewed, given that more layoffs may be coming later this year.

Departures at the Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel and the Tampa Tribune have concluded or are winding down, for now. At the St. Petersburg Times, which has the most reporters still dedicated to health coverage, beats will be reorganized as soon as long-time reporters and editors decide on buyout offers.

Fewer bodies in the newsroom results in health care being one of several beats a reporter covers, sometimes bridging metro, business and lifestyle. For those who replace experienced health reporters, it will be hard to develop expertise because of all the daily assignments they’ll be juggling, older reporters say.

Dorschner

At the Miami Herald, workhorse business reporter John Dorschner still produces several stories a week on health insurance, the pharmaceutical industry and medical hiring. But he juggles that with coverage of energy issues, which are hot news these days.

His editor, Terence Shepherd, says the paper has had to leave positions vacant as people left. “It's been a gradual erosion of coverage over the last few years," he said. "I don’t see what else anyone could do to cut it more.”

The Herald’s Health section focuses on exercise, nutrition and weight-loss, with some medical-science features, such as last week’s staff-written story on a stem-cell researcher at University of Miami. But the money and politics of health care don’t often intrude.

The news side – called the metro desk -- used to cover Jackson Memorial Hospital and its network of outpatient clinics, which serve as lifelines for the poor and uninsured. That position hasn’t been filled for years.

“That’s a huge can of worms because Jackson is taxpayer-funded,’’ said Shepherd. “Our watchdog role is diminished because we don’t have a single person dedicated to Jackson, plain and simple.”

Wessel

In Orlando, Harry Wessel recently accepted a buyout after 34 years in various roles at the Sentinel, most recently as health-business reporter, and is now free-lancing. He recalls the three years he spent covering Nemours’ fight for state permission to build a children’s hospital, over the fierce objections of Orlando Regional Medical Center and Florida Hospital.

“I wrote a lot of in-depth 35- and 40-inch stories over that battle and I never detected a concern over space,’’ said Wessel, who left the paper in late July. “Now we have a story brewing about both of the big hospitals going after a heart-transplant program. I’m sure it’ll be covered, but I don’t see the reporter getting that kind of space to write about it.”

Another question: Will the reporter assigned to cover the story have a good understanding of the state certificate-of-need system and any changes in commercial or public payments for transplants that could influence the debate? For that matter, will the reporter even have time to leave the newsroom or will the coverage have to be entirely by phone?

Gary Schwitzer, a University of Minnesota professor of journalism who monitors the quality of health coverage nationally and posts results at  HealthNewsReview.org, said he has seen a trend toward shorter stories that are poorly researched and edited. As veteran writers leave, he said, they’re either replaced by reporters with little experience or no one at all.

That leaves health coverage to the wire services, such as Associated Press or Reuters. Too often, Schwitzer said, the tight news hole means wire stories are “butchered” for length.

“We’re seeing a lot of good wire stories that may have gone 800, 1,000 words and they’re just being gutted down to 300 or 250,” said Schwitzer. “Less enterprise, more wires, but not even the best of the wires.”

Schwitzer stressed that the major problem isn’t length; his panel has given high ratings to many 500-word stories. But as experienced writers and editors walk out the newsroom door, he said, younger reporters who take over don’t know the right questions to ask.

In a two-year review of 600 stories from 50 different news organizations, Schwitzer found that 75 percent failed to discuss the cost of the health program, service or policy that the story describes. About two-thirds failed to discuss any harm or benefits that might result.

“I call it a kid in a candy-store view of U.S. health care,’’ Schwitzer said. “Stories don’t probe for conflicts of interest, or question the harm of policies. You’re also seeing a lot more of these unquestioning, fluffy-soft personal health, personal gratification stories and less dedication to in-depth, analytical, issue-oriented stories.”

The heyday of health reporting began in the late 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. The AIDS epidemic focused more attention on public health. The growth of corporate medicine and managed care led many newspapers to develop business beats on the health care industry. The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 triggered a national debate on the need for health insurance reform, which meant reporters had to be able to explain how the insurance system worked. And the Bush administration’s drive to move Medicare into the private sector created a need for hybrid government and business reporting.

There’s no shortage of interest in serious health reporting among young journalism graduates who are showing up in newsrooms as interns. But what they encounter there is anything but encouraging, says Penny Duckham, who heads the Kaiser Media Internships in Health Reporting.

“(W)hen our interns go into the newsrooms every summer…there are almost no editors with time now to spend looking at their work,’’ Duckham told the Association of Health Care Journalists at its annual convention in March.

“I think it means that there’s very little historic memory in most newsrooms that they go into,’’ Duckham said. “I mean, the great news is there are lots of people interested in the health beat, but where are the paid jobs?”

As the memory disappears in newsrooms, the reader is left to contend with the mass of information available on the Internet. The paradox, says the Post’s Galewitz, is that there is more health care information available to the average citizen than ever before, but fewer reporters who can comb through data and synthesize it at the state and local level for time-pressed readers.

“Is newspaper health news going to come back? I’ll be optimistic and say I hope so. But who knows?,’’ he said. “There’s certainly a lot of interest in health care. But when you’re watching 120 of your colleagues walk out the door next week, it’s definitely a different environment.”

--Tim Collie can be reached at ctcollie@gmail.com.