Insights

<p>It might cause a snicker or two from many Angelenos, but last week, I took a tour of the Los Angeles River.</p>

<p>Why California has fewer smokers,anti-depressant bonanza, a lifesaving test for newborns and more from our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>Beware of the Big Idea science stories first marketed as breakthroughs through magazine covers and PowerPoint presentations — only to be proven with increasing regularity to be more fiction than fact.</p>

<p>Fast food and food stamps, cutbacks in worker safety programs, Jerry's Kids loses Jerry and more from our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>This week, we bring you opportunities with two health-related foundations seeking communication professionals to manage their initiatives, plus editor and writer positions at online publications.</p>

<p>Do death threats to an isolated few make for good journalism or just sensationalism? And in pursuing the unusual do journalists run the risk of skewing the overall situation? Does having one source on each side of the issue really provide accurate balance and meaningful context? Questions are easy, answers are harder.</p>

<p>Thanks to the influential science blog Retraction Watch, when a paper gets pulled, the world hears about it. Here are my favorite Retraction Watch contributions to medical research and health reporting.</p>

<p>The latest on a national salmonella outbreak, rising Medicare and Medicaid costs and good news for some Californians with expensive health insurance, plus more in our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>Today's <em>Daily Briefing</em>&nbsp;brings you new ways to think about how you cover health.</p>

<p>Journalist Emily Ramshaw gives the backstory on how she reported her ground-breaking series on Texas' colonias, impovershed neighborhoods that remain without running water, paved roads or electricity after decades of neglect.</p>