Erosion of the capital press corps creates concern
By Tim Collie
8/8/2008 © Florida Health News
(Second in an occasional series)
Because of Florida’s peculiar geography, with its state Capitol located hundreds of miles from its major metro areas, a relative handful of reporters have the task of covering an enormous bureaucracy and multibillion-dollar budget. It’s never been a cakewalk, but it’s about to get a whole lot harder.
Bodies and experience are disappearing from capital bureaus as well as home-town newsrooms. That means coverage of the state’s health agencies -- which traditionally get short shrift anyway, reporters admit – will be even skimpier in the months and years to come.
In recent weeks, The Miami Herald capital bureau trimmed back from three reporters to two, as has The Palm Beach Post. The Orlando Sentinel and The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, both owned by the Tribune Company, have cut their bureaus from two reporters apiece to one. So did The Tampa Tribune.
No one knows whether the state’s largest newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times, will keep three reporters in the capital bureau, as its down-sizing proceeds.
The shrinking of the Tallahassee press corps concerns Tony Carvalho, president of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida. “Those are the people who are here on the ground, who go into the meetings, who are trying to understand all the implications of budget cuts and battles,” he said. “And there’s a lot fewer of them right now.”
For the agencies that play a role in the health of the state’s vulnerable populations -- the Departments of Health, Elder Affairs and Children and Families and the Agency for Health Care Administration -- it’s going to be “coverage by press release,” according to State Sen. Nan Rich (D-Sunrise). “Some of us who care about these issues are petrified about the loss of coverage.”
If there are no reporters to challenge the information that agencies put out, “the truth gets lost, if it gets out at all,’’ said Rich. “Citizens need this reporting, and legislators can’t be experts on every issue. They depend on it, too.”
Rich, one of the most knowledgeable legislators on health issues, cited the recent loss of Gary Fineout of The Miami Herald and Linda Kleindienst of The South Florida Sun-Sentinel as examples of the brain drain taking place in the state’s newspaper capital bureaus.
Fineout is now free-lancing; he debuted Thursday on Florida Health News with a widely read story on AHCA Secretary Holly Benson. Kleindienst will move to a different kind of journalism, working for city magazines and a business publication.
The downsizing in Tallahassee bureaus mirrors in miniature the erosion going on in newsrooms around the state. (See Part 1 of this series, “Who will cover health issues if reporters are gone?”).
New online media haven’t yet developed a business model that could finance a sizeable reporting staff. Private citizens seldom have the time or know-how to dig into public records, contracts, and meeting minutes while working phones and attending press conferences.
Fineout said that finding good stories in Tallahassee means being there to pigeonhole sources outside hearing rooms and in their offices.
“With the staffing reductions going on, I don’t think it’s going to take too long for politicians and government entities to figure out that if you just keep feeding stuff to media outlets, they’ll only have time to deal with what’s being churned out,’’ Fineout said. “There won’t be any time to investigate or do anything more meaningful.”
Given the number of issues that need to be followed and the complexity of health financing and regulation, few capital reporters can afford to specialize in it. The best coverage emerges from team efforts between the paper’s hometown health reporter and a colleague in Tallahassee, said Steve Bousquet, capital bureau chief for The St. Petersburg Times.
Covering health is “a priority, but I have to say that so is everything else in state government,” said Bousquet, who noted that there is less space in the print edition than there used to be. “I don’t think we’ve ever had the resources it takes: It’s not easy to cover a government representing 20 million people with three.”
Tallahassee bureaus break stories that have a major impact on health care in their home coverage areas and sometimes statewide:
--Bousquet broke a story in July about the forced departure of the AHCA inspector general, whose report a year ago halted the growth of a Medicaid “reform” pilot. The firing of Linda Keen got only minor play in the pages of The St. Petersburg Times. But it electrified Tallahassee and led to a prominent Times editorial that said the firing didn’t “pass the smell test.”
--The Miami Herald bureau analyzed the state tax rolls and reported in April that Miami-Dade and Broward counties send $7.15 billion in taxes and fees to Tallahassee but receive only $6.69 billion back in services. The story noted that the pending cuts in Medicaid would hit South Florida hard because of tits disproportionate share of recipients.
--Florida Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a budget bill last year that would have boosted state payments to Medicaid HMOs and wiped out some protections for the mentally ill after The Tampa Tribune revealed budget maneuvers that took place unnoticed by most legislators.
Despite the successes, health issues often get overlooked until they fester. An example, said Carvalho, is the need for graduate medical education in the state to replace retiring physicians. “That’s really not something that’s written about a lot,” he said.
Among the issues that need to be watched in the next year is the Cover Florida program, which is supposed to offer more affordable insurance than is currently available. Its success could affect the future of 3.8 million uninsured Floridians.
“The capital press corps has never done a particularly good job of covering the regulatory agencies, the Department of Health, the health care bureaucracy,’’ said David Royse, a former Associated Press reporter in Tallahassee who now heads News Service Florida, scheduled to launch next month. It will offer in-depth coverage of the Legislature but will charge a hefty subscription, effectively limiting its audience to lobbyists and other capital insiders.
“We’ll know for sure next session, but I have a feeling health care just isn’t going to be covered well,’’ Royse said. “But that may be true for a lot of subjects, like education or insurance. It won’t just be health care.”
