Insights

<p>A reporter gets a call from the hypothetical Council for Making Sick Kids Smile about an event being sponsored on an otherwise sleepy Sunday. The reporter heads out to the event, hoping for a quick local page filler, and comes back to the newsroom with a great-sounding story with quotes from a well-spoken university professor and a teary mom and a photo of a sick and smiling child holding balloons nuzzling with a baby koala bear.</p>

<p>What reporters in this situation rarely ask is: who founded this council and why?</p>

<p>Dr. Daniel Carlat is a medical curiosity.</p>

<p>We have a guest blogger today: <a href="/users/dlee">Dan Lee</a>, former Riverside Press-Enterprise reporter and current student at the Annenberg School for Communication, is working for the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships and ReportingonHealth.</p><hr /><p>By Daniel Lee</p><p>Reporters covering the health care reform debate have failed to adequately investigate the claims made by both Democratic and Republican leaders and could do more to focus on its local impacts, experts said Wednesday.</p>

<p>In the end, the dirty dentist didn't get away with it.</p> <p>A Collier County Circuit Court judge last week <a href="http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2009/sep/03/former-dentist-gets-10-years…; David Rees Sperry to 10 years in prison for lewd and lascivious battery after Sperry <a href="http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/Apr/04/man_charged_sexual_battery_a…; a 14-year-old boy at a beach near Naples, Florida, and forced the boy to perform oral sex on him.</p>

<p>Hospital seismic safety, redux:</p> <p>I know you're all busy reporting on swine flu and health reform, but California reporters should take a a new look at hospital seismic safety. This is a never-ending, sometimes boring, but really important health policy issue in California.</p>

<p><a href="/users/isabelle">Isabelle Walker</a> says that it is important to get beyond just the emergency room stories and look at longer trends, something difficult to do if you are not dedicated to the field.</p>

<p>I wanted to share a story I wrote about a local author who published a memoir on her struggles with bipolar disorder. I <a target="_blank" href="http://egpnews.com/?p=12387">interviewed her</a> about her book, "Bipolar Girl: My Psychotic Self," which is a frank and detailed account of what it was like growing up in a traditional Mexican-American family that did not possess a "manual" for how to handle her illness, and her own struggle to accept her illness.

<p>My former colleague at the <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, Myron Levin, played an important role in unearthing new information about cell phone use and car accidents.

<p>I've been meaning to write about a great Aug. 9 Denver Post article I read while on a trip to that city. </p>

<p>Reporter Karen Augé <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/firstinthepost/ci_13023972">examined</a&gt; the controversial health policy issues surrounding doctor-owned hospitals in the wake of a death of a young woman at <a href="http://www.mycosh.com/">Colorado Orthopaedic and Surgical Hospital</a>. </p>

<p>Here's how she opens the story: </p>

<p>It’s been five years since I started navigating the waters of social
media. I was trying to get a feel for what others were seeing in
MySpace, so I joined it and I soon joined Facebook too. Flickr,
YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and other sites were part of the plethora of
social media destinations I visited periodically. They all had one
thing in common: they allowed me to socialize and share with others
online.<br />