Share Your Health Journalism Misadventures: Enter Our Facebook Contest!
Everyone has a story about how they got the story, and sometimes the former is better than the latter. We're hoping you'll share yours for a contest we're sponsoring on Reporting on Health's Facebook page. The first prize: a $50 iTunes gift card. The second prize: a copy of Bruce Chatwin's great tale, In Patagonia, to inspire you to ever more daring reporting forays. The deadline to send in your entry is March 4.
We want to know the adventures or misadventures you embarked upon while reporting a health-related story.
But don't feel the need to be too serious. Your tales can be sobering, wise or simply entertaining. Here's how to enter:
1. In 420 or fewer characters, answer this question: What's the craziest thing you did while reporting a health-related story? (Since you only have limited space, feel free to augment your entry with links to pictures, articles or video. Just keep it clean!)
2. Post your story as a status update on our Reporting on Health Facebook page by Fri., March 4 at midnight. Don't forget to "like" us so you can post your update!
3. Check back on our Facebook page after Fri., March 18 to see if you won! We'll also announce the winner here at ReportingonHealth, on Twitter @ReportingonHealth, and in our weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for here.
Please indulge me as I share a few tidbits from my own journalism career, unfettered by the 420-character limit that will force the rest of you to be more concise.
In my case, I'd skip right past the many bars I frequented as a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News to interview factory workers (someone's got to look out for their health and safety, but I recommend skipping the topless waitress as you work the room for information!). Instead, I'd hone in on the time I flew to Choluteca, Honduras from the capital city of Tegucigalpa more than a decade ago. All major roads had been destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, so I talked my way onto a military plane on a relief mission -- the sole passenger in a cargo hold stacked floor to ceiling with mattresses. Nearly mobbed as I rode in the back of a relief truck on water-logged streets, my report focused on the health issues confronting a flooded city without potable water.
"Hondurans are drowning in water and dying of thirst," I wrote for Knight Ridder News Service.
"The storm that killed thousands and left more than a million homeless has destroyed the water supply for 80 percent of the capital and 98 percent of the southern city of Choluteca, water officials say. Hundreds of smaller towns throughout the country also remain isolated, and international relief agencies believe people could die of dehydration before water is restored. In the capital of 1.2 million people, residents are bathing and washing clothes in tributaries of the Rio Choluteca, in waters filled with corpses and raw sewage. Throughout the country, too many desperate people are drinking contaminated water."
Reporting on Health staff will do the judging for our Facebook contest. We're looking forward to your stories and to sharing a few more of our own.