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Preparing
Health, Medical and Science Journalists for the Future |
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2005 | 2004 | 2003
| 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995
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Fostering Advanced Education and Training: Initiatives for
Higher Education in Health, Medical and Science Journalism
Core Studies
Internships,Field Visits and Mentoring
Mentoring Programs
Internships and Practical Assignments
New Approaches to Teaching and Field Work
The faculty, students and journalism professionals in the program
identify curriculum priorities and innovations at the universities
and colleges to improve the education and training of future
print and electronic journalists in the health, medical and
science specializations. The following is a sampling of some
of the ideas and my additional suggestions for broader consideration
after three years of directing the program.
Students should have strong basic reporting, editing and writing
skills, and a good overview of the history and major trends
in science, medicine and health. General understanding is needed
in biostatistics, epidemiology, research methodologies and statistical
analysis to distinguish solid from incomplete or questionable
research findings.
They should master library research methods to quickly access
multiple sources from respected research journals, the general
and trade press. The uses of databases from online and compact
disk materials is essential, as is knowledge of the Internet.
In 1996, the Merck awards seminars at Rutgers added hands-on
Internet and online workshops at the School of Communication,
Information and Library Studies computer laboratories, and with
specialists from the university's libraries and journalism/communication
faculty as instructors.
Shannon Martin, a Rutgers University assistant professor
in the Department of Journalism and Mass Media and a former
reporter who specializes in online resources for journalists,
participated in the Rutgers workshop and illustrated web sites
that can be found on health and medical information through
Netscape searches.
She and colleagues at the workshop including Jon Oliver,
Assistant Dean in SCILS for computer resources, and Nancy
Roth, then an assistant communication professor in the school
who demonstrated interactive communications media, all cautioned
the students to treat information on the World Wide Web and
the Internet with a very critical eye as to source and reliability.
How frequently was the information updated, and were reliable
sources used and clearly documented?
Martin cautioned that misinformation in a newspaper article
can be instantly recorded in a database with dozens of other
publications unknowingly repeating it almost immediately. She
makes her students check and recheck sources and quotes, and
says: "They simply should use the online references as a vehicle
for knowing it exists, but not as a carved in stone truthful(ness)."
It is also important to "cite, cite, cite attribute, attribute,
attribute," to properly credit the intellectual property of
others, she said.
Myoung Chung Wilson and Helen Hoffman, library
specialists at Rutgers University, led an afternoon hands-on
session in the computer laboratory in which health and medical
resources were shown in online and Internet modes, and the participants
then conducted individual searches.
This practical computer exposure, with more advanced workshops
and seminars introduced as people progress in skills competence,
is a valuable part of any science journalism program.
Journalism students should complete their major and a second
area of studies or dual major which provides opportunities for
broader liberal arts and special studies in the health, medical
and science fields. Collaborative courses co-taught by the journalism
program and the medical school or selected science departments
should be encouraged. This could also foster mentoring efforts
between scientists and medical/health specialists and advanced
journalism majors or professional journalists wishing to develop
specialization.
Future journalists should master newer media interactive technologies
and multimedia skills for combining text, audio, video and graphics
as new career opportunities open up in the computer based online
and Internet worlds of cyberspace. Fundamental training in the
audio and visual communication sectors will give students greater
options to consider careers in print, television or radio, as
well as the emerging newer media.
Quality writing is a prized skill that should be nurtured by
reading contemporary and classical literature, a lifelong habit
nourished in college. Business and financial journalism is increasingly
intertwined with scientific, medical and health reporting, and
students should have a grasp of this interaction.
Ethics and the range of social, economic and political responsibilities
of both journalists and the people they cover in health, medicine
and science ought to be high on the study agenda. Alliances
can be developed with institutes that focus on ethics, or with
philosophy departments within the colleges.
Many of these topics converge in the current development of
managed health care policy and implementation, which should
be a prime topic of study and attention. During the first three
years of our program, national policy initiatives to transform
health care were under vigorous debate and major health maintenance
plans were launched, sharply altering the composition of health
care well into the next century. There was common agreement
in the seminars with professional journalists that managed care
will remain at the top of the news media's agenda, and innovative
ways must be found to explain the issues, and put them in human
terms of how individuals and families are affected.
Within the universities, journalism departments will find it
useful to link up with other disciplines such as sociology,
economics, history, political science, social work and community
development to examine these topics and give their students
a wider view of the issues.
Stephen Solomon, an Associate Professor in the Department
of Journalism at New York University who has served in the university's
Science and Environmental Reporting Program, believes the coverage
of the Clinton legislation was a watershed in health/medical
reporting-involving interrelationships with business, finance
and government, sometimes with special interest advertising
taking the upper hand. He faults the news media for not fully
informing and explaining the issues. He urged the participants
to analyze and learn from this experience, as the managed care
and health policy issues return again and again.
A regular part of the awards program has been a visit with top
research scientists at Merck & Co., Inc. each year. The scientists
share their latest research in such areas as AIDS or osteoporosis,
and the students and faculty have freewheeling discussions on
the research, the methods and process of bringing new products
to market and the societal implications. They also see the latest
technologies such as elaborate computer modelling of cell structures
that become targets for pharmaceutical intervention and talk
with the specialists who create these tools.
The field visits are highly rated each year, and spark discussions
about the importance of building such field visits into every
journalism program concerned with health and science coverage.
This can be done with guest lectures by outside experts, but
is no substitute for field visits where the students see the
scientists at work, and talk with them on their home ground.
Jon Ziomek, Associate Professor, Assistant Dean and Graduate
Editorial Director at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism,
said his school is trying to recruit more students with science
backgrounds, and also to get the journalism students into the
laboratories alongside the scientists. He wants to see more
emphasis on science journalism, with the classes better connecting
with the broader, "big picture" issues of science. He also wants
students in the science journalism classes to learn more about
the business side of the health and medical industries.
Ziomek does not necessarily want science writers to be from
the sciences, but feels they need a strong science background
to reassure the public about the competence of a science or
health journalist. Solomon agrees and says in longer, indepth
stories, greater science background helps the journalist see
the subtleties, shadings and nuances that might otherwise be
missed.
Kenneth Goldstein, a recently retired professor at the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism who has participated
in the seminars for the last three years, said a comprehensive
approach is important in areas such as environmental coverage,
where not only the health and science issues, but the economics,
politics and social values must be better understood by the
students.
At Columbia, Goldstein devoted two days a week to an intensive
science writing seminar in the spring, and brought the students
on field visits for close-in discussions with scientists and
interviews for stories. New York City is a good laboratory for
science reporting. Goldstein emphasizes health reporting in
his program and he uses visits to Mt. Sinai hospital to cover
geriatrics and gerontology, for example, or class meetings with
science journalists.
"Essentially, we learn by doing. You do science, you do writing,
you cover stories," Goldstein says. "Start with relevance which
is the key thing in every story. To get people to read a story
you have to find some way of telling them why they need to know
about it," he advises the students.
He values reporting told through the experiences of people affected
by the larger health issues, laced with analogy, metaphor and
simile in a language people can understand. He emphasizes the
importance of multiple sources that are clearly cited in the
stories. His students read deeply into the health and science
journals and special publications, and contact groups such as
the Scientists in the Public Interest.
As a young student, Goldstein himself went through a one-year
special science journalism program at Columbia, doing intensive
courses, even dissecting a body in anatomy. He favors a good
masters program with a science reporting course, and then a
one-year return to the university by journalists for an intensive
fellowship to study science and reflect on the science journalism
performance.
Christopher Callahan, Assistant Dean at the University
of Maryland School of Journalism, said he learned a lot by listening
to the students and others at the Merck seminar. He believes
priorities include a focus on analytical thinking that will
enable you to translate complex science issues into understandable
ones; attention to the impact on readers; ability to find sources;
internships and practical experience; and bringing a healthy
skepticism to reporting.
He said it is necessary to create high quality journalists before
letting them specialize; science writers should write stories
that simply hold up as good journalism, aside from the topic,
and a double major in science and journalism will be useful,
with a life-long effort by journalists to continue learning
and expand their knowledge in health and science.
The seminar participants recommended that mentoring programs
be established so that advanced undergraduate and graduate students
can link up with specialists in their primary interests of health,
medicine or science, and deeply explore issues from the multidimensional
perspectives of how to best present news reports.
These programs can be not only for students, but newer journalists
in the field who wish to develop or upgrade their knowledge
as future reporting or editing specialists. These might also
counterbalance a mood of distrust that some people describe
between the sources-the health, medical and science communities-and
the journalists when it comes to fears of being misquoted or
misreported on one hand, and the concern by journalists of being
manipulated or given partial or incorrect information. Some
suggest it is not so much fear of being misquoted, as unhappiness
with incomplete stories lacking adequate information on the
sources for the research and the relevant methodology and statistics
to put the story in context.
Howard Bray, Director of the Knight Center for Specialized
Journalism at the University of Maryland's School of Journalism,
who participated in the inaugural year of the awards program,
believes that journalists at newspapers must present not only
news and information that readers want, but introduce them to
new topics that are unfamiliar but important to them. In this
sense, reporters and editors play a significant role as an early
warning device for developing issues.
To do this well, journalists need to be updated with specialized
knowledge, and Bray said that at his center there is periodic
attention to health and science issues. Through intensive seminars
of several days to two weeks, Bray shows the connections, the
context, content and perspective on topics such as cancer research
or nuclear energy. The Knight seminars present the science and
technology, the economics and the political dimensions while
spotlighting the many pressure groups impacting on a science
or medical issue.
Internships are of great importance to the students in developing
their journalistic skills in the health and science fields,
as well as practical reporting and writing assignments in their
regular classes. Daniel Drolette, an NYU student winner, said
that paid internships were especially important because they
not only helped with school costs but also because the sponsoring
organization took students more seriously if they were contributing
stipends for the interns.
Several students advised shopping for the best internship as
you would in seeking a job. Be sure there is a clear understanding
of the duties and the opportunities to learn and develop skills,
and know the quality of supervision and mentoring that a good
internship should provide.
Linda Richards, a Columbia student winner, was a health
educator and nutritionist before deciding to be a science journalist:
"One of the main reasons I wanted to come do it is that I would
feel the frustration of myself and also my clients who decided
they didn't want to believe anything they have read, with all
of the conflicts (in the reporting of research science findings)."
Lori A. Wolfgang, a student winner from University of
Maryland, found it satisfying to research scientific studies
appearing in the news media and measuring the accuracy of the
statistics and research findings as reported. She also identified
skills many students repeatedly cite as high priority-the ability
to understand where scientists are coming from, and solid interviewing
skills to get the best from them.
Rachel Donner, an award winner from Northwestern, brought
a bicultural sensibility to the discussions as a Canadian studying
science journalism in the United States. For her, an important
issue was to translate complex scientific subjects into clearly
understandable ones. Donner feels not having a science background
helps since it forces her to approach stories with a need to
understand them from the lay person's perspective, and put the
reporting in a meaningful context of people's lives.
Brenda K. DeKoker, a student winner from New York University,
displayed the feisty enterprise that drives many young journalists.
She heavily researched a story on drugs used to induce abortion,
stumbled on significant breaking news angles and was able to
get Newsday in New York to use the story.
But the doctor who was the source of the story was disappointed
with the tone in the published story, feeling the report seemed
to water down his revelations. Undaunted, DeKoker went back
to the doctor and interviewed him again_this time about the
deficiencies he felt were in the story, and thus turned a negative
into a positive learning experience for herself.
Kristen Bole, a Columbia student winner, welcomed the
opportunity for field visits with scientists, and said the science
writers have to be aware of needs of people on the streets.
In her Columbia program, coverage of the South Bronx is done
on a regular basis with publication of a weekly paper for the
redeveloping urban area. "Find out what people are really interested
in and find out what really affects people's lives. And if lead
poisoning is a major issue in their community, then that is
what you should write about," she said.
Victoria Forlini, a Northwestern student winner, described
practical assignments in science reporting that helped her:
from writing about the nature of a curve ball in baseball with
interviews of players, baseball managers, physicists and little
leaguers, to a review of science books and articles written
about research findings. She pushed to get more science into
her basic "boot camp" reporting course. She was also delighted
in having a Pulitzer Prize winner from the Chicago Tribune teaching
a science reporting course at the same time his major series
on breast cancer ran in the paper, and was analyzed in class.
Gautam Kar, a Rutgers student winner, said it is important
to get experience in the field and he did so as a student writing
health related issues for the university student newspaper,
and also preparing materials for radio and cable television.
He later did an internship with a major medical foundation in
its communications division. He wants to see more interaction
between the journalism department and science units at the universities,
and greater opportunities for evening courses on basic science
issues.
Brenda Rios, a student winner from the University of
Maryland, favors studying core journalism with a secondary level
of studies in science and library sciences. She wants to see
more science stories that appeal to the interest of young people,
and health care reform stories that dwell less on the politics
of the story and more on how it will affect people. She thinks
students should apply early for internships and not be afraid
to spell out what they expect from the intern experience.
Rios covered health and environmental stories in the Maryland
state house, reporting through the college news bureau. Her
initial interest in health reporting was sparked by a story
on problems of sanitation and street vendors in Mexico City,
and then a story at a women's prison in Lexington, Kentucky,
where prisoners lacked proper gynecological examinations.
William E. Burrows, who participates in the Merck program,
and is professor and director of the Science and Environmental
Reporting Program at New York University, says his students
are immersed in issues such as microbiology, toxins and the
environment, genetic engineering and DNA. They write intensively,
participate in role-playing press conferences, and use the materials
in feature writing classes.
"We tell our people you are a human being first, a journalist
second and a science writer third," Burrows said, disabusing
the students of any illusions that they are scientists, and
reminding them they are reporters helped by good science background:
"A `journalist' in my estimation is a reporter who is dead.
[The news] has got be reported; that is what you do and you
have got to love it. If you do not love it, don't do it. That
has to be repeated constantly."
Burrows worked for the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal
and has authored a number of books on space exploration and
the nuclear arms race.
Robert Logan, Professor and Associate Dean at the University
of Missouri School of Journalism, who specializes in health/medical
journalism, was concerned with the ability of students to understand
and evaluate issues in epidemiology and toxicology or to understand
basic statistics. He volunteered six years ago to teach a graduate
research methods course and focused less on general mass communication
research and more on how to be a good science writer with these
additional tools, and with help from a national computer reporting
project at the school.
Logan says you need to teach the next generation of reporters
how to evaluate evidence, and at the same time change the whole
process of how the public understands technology, medicine and
the entire cluster of issues on science and the environment.
A goal is to transform the debate among the many competing interests
in government, the private sector, corporations and the medical
research industry to better address quality of life issues.
"How do you change journalism fundamentally so that you end
up not abandoning what we are talking about but also change
journalism so that you actually show that you care about the
quality of public life so that you expand and improve it, so
that you engage people in public life and public discussion
about science, health and environmental policy?" Logan asked.
Logan has set a goal for himself in the next decade of his academic
career to change journalism education: to see if "we can invigorate
and train ourselves, invigorate and train our profession-can
we convince people that caring and nurturing for public life
is just as much a worthy endeavor as getting the facts straight,
and writing with care, and writing with a perspective in context?"
The seminar participants discussed how journalists can play
a more direct role in linking community and people concerns
with the reporting, and one student award winner, Anita Srikamswaran,
a student from Northwestern University who was studying to be
a science writer and was already a licensed medical doctor,
said there is a movement in community health services to let
the people of the community speak out on what is of concern
to them.
Joan London, a faculty member at University of Maryland,
said a public information science course at her college includes
assignments for the students to interview not only the scientists
as sources, but also the readers to get a better idea of what
their concerns and health interests are in shaping the information.
The threads of such discussions woven throughout the three years
of the Merck program are sections in a larger quilt: the major
discussions taking place within the news industry today on issues
of civic journalism. The idea of journalists putting aside their
traditional role as omniscient observers removed from the fray,
and engaging a community of interests in the identification
of key issues that need reporting, public discourse and action-with
story ideas percolating up from the community as well as being
reported from above.
How to create this synergy of community interests without jeopardizing
the role journalism cherishes as a disinterested observer free
of special interests needs future experimentation as we seek
ways to improve health and medical coverage, and make it more
meaningful to readers and audiences.
Developing More Flexible Models of Study and Research
In examining new formats and structures for teaching health
and science to journalists, I discussed the programs I direct
as a professor at the Journalism Resources Institute at Rutgers
University. The JRI has several research scholarships for undergraduate
and graduate students and internships to support their involvement
in real-life projects that the JRI is administering.
Merck student award winners like Elana Shapochnikov have
done advanced research into newer media technologies and how
they are affecting the reporting of medical and health issues,
or how science information can be better disseminated with newer
media.
She combined her journalism interests with her language proficiencies
and completed an analysis of Russian coverage of health and
medical issues in major Moscow newspapers. This project linked
her honors program studies in comparative literature and Slavic
studies with journalism. She is now going to law school to combine
her interests with health journalism and legal studies and is
looking toward a future career in communication law.
Another Rutgers winner, Stefanie Wilsey, is a public
health major who also wrote extensively for the student daily
newspaper in New Brunswick, The Targum, and is doing research
at the JRI. In the fall of 1996, she was in England as part
of a semester abroad which included observing coverage of health
issues by the British press. She returned to do media research
into coverage of the AIDS issue at our Journalism Resources
Institute. |
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