I am touched, and I chuckle, when an occasional follower on Twitter writes, “Oh, how I miss HealthNewsReview.org!” Or I’ll read, “We need HealthNewsReview.org now more than ever.”
The fact is that these readers are usually reacting to something just published on HealthNewsReview.org, which is still alive. I think I know, though, what followers mean to convey. They recognize that since we lost our funding at the end of 2018, our output has declined dramatically. No money, no full-time staff. We are a shadow of our former selves.
But we do still publish, and what we post does receive a lot of attention. In fact, traffic to the site in 2019 reached an all-time high. Recently, our work has shown up or been cited by a range of media observers, including these:
KMSP-TV, Fox 9 news: Caution urged with COVID ‘breakthroughs’
And on these blogs/websites:
- The Association of Health Care Journalists “Covering Health” blog: Fauci’s announcement of remdesivir trial findings leaves out crucial detail.
- Duke University Forge Center Friday Roundup blog: https://forge.duke.edu/blog/forge-friday-roundup-may-1-2020 (In the first bullet in the section labeled: BASIC SCIENCE, CLINICAL RESEARCH & PUBLIC HEALTH)
- The Lown Institute: Slow down your giddyup on Gilead news
- Scientific American blog: in the first item in this Coronavirus Roundup
I’m also continuing to teach – not only in the guidance in what I publish – but in some innovative ways. I will be joining veteran public health journalist Maryn McKenna as a guest speaker in a free online course on doing journalism in/on the COVID-19 pandemic. She tells me that 6000 students have enrolled so far from 151 countries. I’ll be talking about how to assess evidence and not fall for hype. The course is offered by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin, in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNESCO, with support from the Knight Foundation and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
So you can see that the 14-year long efforts of HealthNewsReview.org continue, although altered over time. Please keep coming back to this website from time to time. Or subscribe to our Monday newsletter (here is this week’s edition). Whenever it’s published, it summarizes anything we’ve posted in the prior week. I have a limited number of subscriptions available. You can email me at feedback@healthnewsreview.org if you wish to subscribe.
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