Angilee Shah

<p><em>Welcome to the inaugural post of Career GPS, ReportingonHealth's new blog about pursuing your passions while looking out for your pocketbook. Here, we will discuss career opportunities, growth and development for journalists and media professionals working on health topics. We'll talk about new kinds of media jobs and have Q&amp;As with people who have taken interesting turns in their careers. Please do join in the discussion by commenting and posting your own entries about your experiences.

<p>When radio reporter <a href="../../../../../../../../users/devinelizabeth">Devin Browne</a> began her foray to the edges of journalism, media commentators seized on her project quickly. Her multimedia journal uses prose, images and audio clips to tell a story about how she and a photographer moved into the cramped apartment of an immigrant family in MacArthur Park to learn Spanish. <a href="http://the-entryway.com/">The Entryway</a>, so called for the small space Browne rented, was quickly and harshly criticized for exoticizing Los Angeles' large Latino population.

<p>The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program released a report today on "The State of Metro America," which focuses on the demographics of cities and suburbs.<br /><br />Poynter Institute's News University, a site filled with great education resources for journalists of all experience levels, introduced the report in <a href="http://www.newsu.org/state-metro-america-key-trends-future">a webinar of the same name</a> last week. You need to enroll in the class to access the content, which has a promotional price of $4.95.<br />

<p>If you are anticipating covering Southern California's inevitable weather stories this summer -- heat waves, water shortages, wildfires -- consider this: These narratives are health, environment, public policy and economic stories all in one.</p>

<p>When Dr. R. Jan Gurley (a.k.a. Doc Gurley) went to Haiti to provide emergency medical care earlier this year, it blew her mind that she could carry her entire medical library with her on her iPhone. "My entire medical library, including little videos of how to do really invasive procedures, is on my iPhone. I should be able to text, upload photos and even little bits of video with my iPhone," <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/blogs/doc-gurleys-ground-rules-haiti">… told ReportingonHealth</a>.</p>

<p>This review first appeared at <a href="http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2010/04/26/the-real-c… Public Square.</a></p>

<p>Health care reform, and the ideological, political and public health battles that surrounded it, reached a fever pitch in the media by the time the legislation reached the House of Representatives in March. Many members of ReportingonHealth were watching and chronicling these events closely. Here, a cross-section of reporters discusses their experience working on these complex stories.</p>

<p><em>This article was first&nbsp;published by <a href="http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2010/03/29/can-the-go… Public Square</a>, and is reposted here with the author's permission.</em></p>

<p><a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/users/mindofandre">Andre Blackman</a>'s conception of public health casts a huge net. He thinks about environments and neighborhoods, data and medicine. He laments the fast food restaurants that fill the spaces of low-income communities, and the parks and fresh produce that do not. "It's a cycle," he says, and one that makes it hard to achieve good health.</p>

<p>Depending on who you ask, an "informavore" is either really smart and well-connected or overly wired and confused.<br /><br />Jody Ranck is an informavore of the first kind. An independent consultant and pricipal investigator at the Public Health Institute in Oakland, he is working now to create the Public Health Innovation Center, which seeks to reign in the power of social media and mobile tools to "<a href="http://nomadologies.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/re-mixing-public-health-pl…; practices in public health.<br />