The Journal Sentinel has launched an interesting partnership with an online medical publication. The deal, reported earlier this week in Editor & Publisher, calls for the newspaper’s John Fauber to produce 10 articles focusing on “the interface of science, industry, and public policy” that would be jointly published by the JS and the Web site MedPage Today.
MedPage Today, based in Little Falls, N.J., targets physicians with articles that offer doctors “a clinical perspective on the breaking medical news that their patients are reading.” It also offers doctors and other health care professionals free Continuing Medical Education course credits required by many states.
The joint venture with the JS will cover stories “ranging from bench research to the everyday clinical experience with an emphasis on the interface of science, industry, and public policy,” according to the publications’ joint news release. “This unique series will drill down to offer not only the headline news, but also the backstory that culminated in the headlines.”
It looks like a good fit. Fauber has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for explanatory journalism and also has an American Heart Association Howard L. Lewis Achievement Award for reporting on cardiovascular medicine.
But he may be as well known — if not more so — for his aggressive coverage of conflict-of-interest questions involving medical researchers, like this story. In fact, he’s been so productive on that mini-beat that the newspaper is archiving his ongoing coverage of the issue in one place.
MedPage Todayappears to have a special interest in monitoring that same issue. Medical ethics is a labeled category for some of its reports, and its coverage of research reports includes breakout boxes disclosing reported conflicts on the part of the researchers.
Evidently Fauber’s work caught the eye of MedPage Today some time back: In a blog entry last August, MedPage Today Executive Editor Peggy Peck showed how the publications have been informally feeding each other to help advance stories.
As news organizations like the JS continue to shrink and find resources stretched — all as the digital revolution is reshaping the media map — we’re likely to see a lot more joint ventures and collaborative projects like this one.
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Pressroom in Print: March 2010
In the March issue of Milwaukee Magazine, Pressroom looks at the Wisconsin Gazette, the state’s new newspaper for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) readers.
The GLBT History Project has an online history of the gay press in Wisconsin. You can find it here.
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