Not long ago I had lunch with a former colleague who headed media relations at a multi-national pharmaceutical company. She was lamenting how so many of her former "contacts" at newspapers and magazines had baled out of the traditional news business and either joined web site operators or enlisted on the dark side by joining public relations agencies.
Her observation reminded me of an article I wrote for O'Dwyer's last year, documenting how quickly the news business is decomposing. Here is a version of that article...
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How large is the “news hole” for health care information in the U.S. media? As news outlets reshape themselves, cut costs and focus on areas of most appeal to their viewers and readers, this is a disquieting question for public relations practitioners involved in the medical and pharmaceutical industries. The answer both points to the challenge health care public relations practitioners face and a path forward.
A report published in December 2008 by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation (www.kff.org) and the Pew Research Center’s Project Excellence in Journalism suggests that health care coverage in national and local media may be shrinking faster than the polar ice caps, leaving those dependent on traditional media for health care information stranded like polar bears on ever-diminishing ice flows of news.
According to this study health news was the 8th most covered subject, with 3.6 percent of media space devoted to the topic. This is three times more coverage than education or transportation, but an asterisk compared to the elections and politics (21.3 percent of the news hole), foreign affairs (13.6 percent), foreign news (11 percent), or even crime (6.6 percent) or disasters and accidents (4.2 percent).
The Kaiser and Pew researchers examined front-page coverage in small, medium and large market newspapers as well as network morning and evening news programs, cable programs, radio and even general interest internet outlets during an 18 month time span in 2007 and 2008,
The network evening news programs (ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News) dedicated the largest percentage of their ‘casts to health news—more than 8 percent, outshining newspapers, with 5.9 percent of their front page articles focusing on health care; radio with health comprising 3.6 percent of news coverage; network morning programs (Good Morning America, Today and CBS Morning News) with 3 percent of health programming and online general news outlets such as Yahoo News and MSN dedicating 2.2 percent of their “front pages” to health. Cable outlets, which once helped spearhead health reporting, devoted only 1.4 percent of coverage to health issues.
In terms of the topics most often covered, nearly 42 percent of news covered was disease specific, with cancer, diabetes and obesity, heart disease and AIDS/HIV being the disorders most frequently mentioned. Health policy issues and public health evenly divided the rest of the coverage pie.
The report has some major limitations. The analysis of newspaper coverage only included front-page articles, thus ignoring science and health sections of papers such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It did not include health-dedicated Web sites such as WebMD and HealthCentral.com. Likewise, by focusing on general news broadcasts of the cable outlets, the study did not account for specials produced by experts such as CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Nevertheless, the study quantifies what many have long suspected, that the opportunities in traditional news outlets are shrinking.
Of course, the skimpy news hole for medical news is just one more symptom of the degenerative condition of mainstream media generally. It is no secret that loss of both eyeballs and advertising revenue has led to cutbacks across the news spectrum. The New York Times earlier this month noted that the Cox newspapers chain, owners of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other papers has paired its Washington bureau from 30 reporters eight years ago to zilch-o reporters today.
The reduced commitment to health reporting can be observed at annual medical congresses such as The American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions and the yearly meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. While in years past network news divisions and national newspapers would report on-site from the meeting, increasingly coverage is achieved by phone interviews and wire service reports—if the meetings are covered at all.
For more than a decade, when Americans were surveyed about the domestic issues of most concern to them, health care ranked as issue number one. Even today, with the economic crisis dominating virtually every other subject, Americans remain deeply interested in health and wellness.
Why then, is health news less prominent in coverage? There are several reasons, including the relative complexity of some medical stories, the cost of fielding medical teams and the competition with other subjects. The cable news outlets, once homes to robust medical reporting teams have largely shifted their emphasis to confrontational politics and news “analysis,” leaving less room for straight-forward stories about scientific developments. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough and Fox New’s Bill O’Reilly aren’t that interested in t-cells and microbes.
One observer of the ups and downs of health news is Dr. Bruce Dan, executive medical editor of The Patient Channel on NBC’s Digital Health Network, and a former senior editor at The Journal of The American Medical Association.
Dr. Dan says that when he was starting his journalism career 25 years ago at the ABC affiliate in Chicago, “stations desperately wanted to have their own TV doctors on the air, and they found it advantageous to feature these new doctors and health segments. Week-long sweeps pieces on any number of diseases were heavily-promoted, and breaking news on the latest health topic popped up almost every day.” The novelty, he says, has now worn off, and health news has to compete for coverage with every other topic area. “Ironically, as the number of commercials for pharmaceutical products increases,” he says, “the commitment to news coverage of medicines has decreased.”
Going hand in hand with the less consumer coverage, public relations executives are finding fewer opportunities with the professional press. While a decade ago there were half dozen general interest physician publications, including Medical World News and The Medical Tribune, there are now just memories.
Where do these developments leave us?
The good news—for both consumers, journalists and public relations practitioners—is that while there is less coverage in traditional news outlets, health care information is alive and well in specialty publications and on the internet. For instance, while mental health and illness doesn’t garner much general press attention (commanding just 1.6 percent of news coverage according to the Kaiser/Project Excellence survey), publications such as bp Magazine and Esperanza are offering in-depth coverage of mental illness (bipolar disorder and depression respectively). There are now many publications directed towards individuals with other illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and HIV infection.
Similarly, there are now scores of Web resources for people interested in mental illness, including MentalHelp.net, SelfhelpMagazine, Mental Health Matters plus the renowned sites of advocacy groups such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.
A lot has been written about the veracity of Web health coverage and it is a concern that most sites do not have the strict fact-checking procedures or traditional commitment to objectivity of conventional news outlets. Over time, however, I believe consumers will gravitate to those sites that offer scientifically accurate and balanced coverage of health and medicine.
The Kaiser/Project Excellence report shows that some topics are simply better covered than others, likely because these diseases are of interest to more people. Cancer, diabetes and heart disease rank high. Alzheimer’s disease and ALS rank low. This suggests what generations of smart public relations people know: to win a placement, “the pitch” must be tailored to show why it would be relevant to the news outlet’s audience. That’s not rocket science, but amazingly the point is often lost.
While the morning news programs have often been regarded as the jackpot placements for health news, prospects for placements on these shows, at least in the all-important first half hour, are dim. “The first half hour of the morning news shows dedicated only about a third as much of their time to health as did their counterpart half-hour news programs that appeared in the evening,” found the Kaiser-Pew report. This suggest that to win a morning placement—rare under any circumstances—public relations people must look beyond the first 30 minutes, usually regarded as the hard news block, and must demonstrate beyond a doubt the relevance of the story to the audiences that view the programs after 7:30 am.
The health care pitch is not dead, it is just harder to achieve in mainstream media. Tina Chiara, a senior media relations specialist at Ruder Finn, notes "contrary to what most may think, there are still many opportunities in traditional media despite the surge of online coverage. Traditional media still exists but with fewer and fewer staff so many reporters are not only open to newsworthy ideas but worthwhile contributions in terms of products, companies and context for stories. You just have to spend more time figuring out what will interest readers and viewers."
Finally, the loss of health care opportunities in traditional media should remind us yet again that public relations must not be equated to press relations. To continue to be so defined is a recipe for slow extinction. Likewise, we can never simply rely on practicing our craft tomorrow the way we did it ten years ago, or even last May. The media world is changing and the opportunities for us are shifting. Some opportunities are gone, while others remain bright and within reach.
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