CRAFT: Improve your stories with these tips from journalists who've been there.
When I think about lessons learned in the past six months, two phrases come to mind: time management and narrowing the scope of my projects. Finding sources, doing the research, these things can take a great deal of time.
To document Rubbertown, Ky., residents’ claims of unusually high rates of disease, I needed hard data. Originally, I had planned a health survey of the areas around the industrial plants. When that proved impractical, I enlisted a state health monitoring agency.
In 1973, nearly every Michigan resident was exposed to a toxic chemical. As I brought this story out of the shadows and examined the lasting health effects, I had an advantage: the story was heavily archived and documented.
At first, investigating what kind of discipline the Wisconsin Medical Examining Board was meting out to physicians in response to complaints seemed like a straightforward records search. But it ended up being a more complicated process.
How could legislation designed to protect people from suspected cancer-causing compounds in furniture foam fail to pass? Experts say lobbying money had a lot to do with it. Here's how I tracked the millions of dollars spent by the chemical industry to defeat the bill.
When it comes to health issues, the southeastern corner of Virginia usually is pretty average. That’s why I was surprised to discover a report that showed a city in my readership area has the highest cancer mortality rate in the state.
Former Bloomberg reporter Rob Waters describes his two-year-long quest to interview the “Berlin patient” – at the time, the only known individual to be “cured” of AIDS – and offers tips on how to find sources in the emerging field of AIDS cure research.
There are plenty of places to stumble in teaching kids how to do health journalism. Here are Marona Graham Bailey's do's and don'ts after her first summer teaching middle school students.
Karen Weintraub, a former editor at The Boston Globe, offers tips for editing health and science stories — and deciding what not to cover.
Pairing English-language and ethnic media to report stories can be rewarding and result in great journalism — but it poses its own challenges. Sharon Salyer and Alejandro Dominguez share what they learned from each other in reporting an award-winning series on Hispanic mental health.
There’s hardly a health story out there that cannot benefit from some good data – from estimates of the number of elderly Americans to hospital quality ratings for your community.
This article will help you find useful databases and offer guidance on how to use them accurately. The first pa
Pulling off a narrative story in the medical world requires a different kind of story thinking and reporting. Here are tips from a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.
Get tips on covering medical research stories from veteran AP reporter Lauran Neergaard.
Journalists are using geographic information software (GIS) to map data for stories and graphics about toxic health threats, prescription medicine abuse and EMS response times. Here are more ideas for using GIS in your health reporting.
The first step in asking a stranger to open up to you is to follow the golden rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Get more tips on interviewing patients from a veteran broadcast journalist.
Rural adults are older, sicker, less educated, less well paid and less likely to have health insurance than their city counterparts. Here are some great tips for covering rural health issues — and avoiding common misconceptions — from veteran health journalist and journalism professor Patricia
