Insights

<p><em>In <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/blogs/applying-job-tips-online-editor"… with Career GPS</a>, Kaiser Health News Executive Editor, Online Peggy Girshman shared a document she has created over the years chronicling her DOs and DON'Ts for journalism résumés. Here, she shares her tips with the ReportingonHealth community.</em></p> <p>(All examples drawn from real-life résumés)</p> <p><strong>Don't</strong></p>

<p><a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/users/pgirshmankfforg">Peggy Girshman</a>, executive editor for online at <a href="http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/">Kaiser Health News</a> (KHN), is hiring. This week, she pulls back the curtain for <em>Career GPS</em> readers and explains what she is looking for in a job applicant and shares her personal do's and don'ts for journalism résumés.</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p> <p><strong>Care, Discounted:</strong> Doctors and other <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-10-11/health/bs-hs-groupon-and-he… care providers are glomming onto the Groupon craze</a>, Meredith Cohn reports in the Baltimore Sun. Guess that’s one way to reduce health care costs.</p>

<p>It must have been a slow day at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.</p>

<p><em>We have a guest post today from veteran health journalist <a href="http://www.newsu.org/about/instructors/karl-stark">Karl Stark</a>, health and science editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Karl really knows his way around hospital finance: his stories on a now-defunct health system triggered

<p>Exposure to radon in the home is responsible for an estimated 20,000 lung cancer deaths each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In South Lake Tahoe, more than half of the homes contain toxic levels of the colorless, odorless and tasteless gas.</p> <p>The dangers and causes of radon in our region are well known. Radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the United States. It is also naturally occurring throughout our area due to the granite that dominates our landscape.</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p>

<p>A lot more goes on in schools than the three Rs, and a lot more can be discerned about the health and well being of children by using schools as the laboratory through which to investigate a variety of health care issues. As a health reporting fellow, I'll be joining my interest and experience in covering health and education by exploring the convergence of both within schools in the Bay Area, the readership audience for The Bay Citizen, where I work.</p>

<p>OK. So, here's a confession.</p><p>Blogging scares me.</p><p>It's not&nbsp;that I can't write down&nbsp;my thoughts. Or that I can't&nbsp;will myself to the computer. It's just that blogs&nbsp;are right and left and crazy with opinions. We all have readers&nbsp;out there lerking in the shadows desperate for a sliver of a bias -- which we all have, but are loathe to admit --&nbsp; and I hate to give them any ammunition.</p><p>Or is that just my readers?</p><p>LOL.</p><p>Anyway, here's me... writing a blog.</p>

<p>If you live in L.A. County, and especially if you've driven back to the Los Angeles basin from somewhere else, you've seen it. A steely brown haze hangs over us for much of the year. We live in the smoggiest region in the United States (according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District), but for those raising children here it may not be top of mind. In some parts of the county, moms claw their way onto waiting lists for the "right" preschool while they are still pregnant.