Insights

<p><em>Mary Knudson, a journalist, author and </em><a href="http://advanced.jhu.edu/faculty/view/?id=424"><em>member of the John Hopkins University faculty</em></a><em>, recently discovered that U.S. News &amp; World Report subjected one of her guest blog posts to "keyword" advertising, one of the more ethically troubling practices of online content sites.</em></p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Whooping Cough:</strong> In the wake of California’s worst pertussis epidemic in 60 years, a new state law <a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-whooping-cough-20101007,0,2683454.s… kids aged 12-17 to get vaccinated</a> for the disease before they enter school in 2011, reports Rong-Gong Lin II of the Los Angeles Times.</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>CPR:</strong> No need for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation during CPR? Just chest compressions? New research suggests <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487032985045755342305316166… approach might save more lives</a>, reports The Wall St. Journal’s Jennifer Corbett Dooren.</p>

<p>Reporters everywhere felt their serotonin levels drop when reading Mary Walton’s well-reported and wonderfully written <a href="http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4904">Investigative Shortfall</a>, published last month in <em>American Journalism Review</em>.</p> <p>The ranks of investigative reporters have thinned in recent years, but Walton documents the clear-cutting of I-teams in, as she puts it, “dead tree media.” This fact alone should bring tears to any journalist’s eyes:</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Weight Loss:</strong> Can someone please explain why a weight-loss/sleep study with only 10 participants is <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&amp;cf=all&amp;topic=m&amp;ncl=dc… so much press</a>? Kudos to Foodconsumer.org’s Rachel Howell Stockton for highlighting <a href="http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/2/Obesity/sleep_quality_determines_… limitations of the study</a> while other media coverage hyperventilated.</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>ER Care:</strong> The New York Times’ Lizette Alvarez spends a week in a Brooklyn emergency room and comes back with a beautifully-written <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/nyregion/03emergency.html">distillati… of what she saw</a>. &nbsp;</p>

<p>Dr. James Kartell does not like to be told no.</p> <p>Kartell, a plastic surgeon who practiced in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, shot and killed his estranged wife’s boyfriend while his wife was lying in a hospital bed recovering from pneumonia in 1999.</p>

<p>Surgeon General Regina Benjamin got an earful today from participants in a conference call unveiling a high-level prevention council and strategy called for in the new health reform law.</p>

<p>For writers of most any stripe, getting the gig is only half the battle. Once you've finished your masterpiece, be it an investigative report or a quick blog post, how do you cut through the vast Internet -- Google has already indexed more than one trillion pages -- to find the readers for whom you have worked so hard?</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Health Reform:</strong> California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs a number of bills to move along health reform in the state, including the nation’s first state legislation to create health insurance exchanges. Check out <a href="http://blog.health-access.org/2010/10/implementing-and-improving.html">… list of signed bills</a> at Health Access’ blog.</p>