TIME Magazine’s Alice Park Named February’s Top U.S. Health Journalist

Beverly Hills, CA (March 4, 2009)  – Alice Park, who has reported on medicine and health for TIME magazine since 1993, was named the top health journalist in the country for the month of February 2009.

Health.NewsBios, an affiliate of NewsBios.com, reviewed the performance of more than 50 leading national reporters and editors covering health and medical-related topics and selected Ms. Park as the journalist who turned in the most impressive performance.

 In the space of roughly one month, Ms. Park had two cover stories in the print edition of TIME – including a controversial 3,850-word article on stem cell research – and contributed numerous posts to Time.com.

Her posts at Time.com included stories on: efforts to develop a flu supervaccine; preventing hearing loss in teens; bacterial infections in hospitals; the benefits of statins and the relationship between a mother’s obesity and birth defects.

“Unlike some health reporters who pretty much cruised through February – a slow news month, Ms. Park hustled and behaved like a reporter who is still ‘hungry’ for the opportunity to report,” says Dean Rotbart, founder and executive editor of Health.NewsBios. 

Mr. Rotbart said that while some critics, including fellow journalists, took issue with Ms. Park’s reporting on her February 9th cover, Stem Cell Research: The Quest Resumes, he was impressed with her willingness and that of her editors to take on a topic that is fraught with heated opinions.   “Even those who feel Ms. Park didn’t have sufficient balance in her article have to admit that she stirred the pot, and indirectly at least, also provided them fresh cause to air their own views,” Mr. Rotbart explains.  “Discussing controversial issues is an important journalistic role.”

Ms. Park’s second cover story, Going Nuts Over Allergies, appears in the magazine’s edition dated March 9th.

“There are other news outlets with much larger health and science teams and many more windows with which to cover health and medicine,” Mr. Rotbart observed.  “But Ms. Park really gives fresh meaning to the expression, ‘an army of one.’”

According to Health.NewsBios’ in-depth biographical profile of Ms. Park, she has done fellowships at Harvard Medical School and the UCLA Medical School.  She earned a masters degree in journalism from Boston University.

The selection of Ms. Park as Health.NewsBios Journalist of the Month is made solely by the editorial staff of NewsBios, which is independent and unaffiliated with any news organization, public relations agency or corporation.  Journalists of the Month are named without the consent, advance knowledge or participation of the journalists themselves or their news organizations.

NewsBios maintains in-depth profiles on more than 7,000 reporters, editors and producers – including hundreds who cover health and medical topics.  Existing profiles sell for $69.95 each and contain extensive content available nowhere else.

Comments

[Lance Christiansen, DO]

Dear Alice,

I tore out the article you wrote titled "America's Health Checkup".

It would be hard for an "outside person' to figure out the cause of the current muddle in which health care has found itself, but I am writing a book on a certain medical subject that will explain some of the problem. One chapter is specifically about why medicine is in a muddle.

Medicine is in a muddle all around the world, because most countries, even third world countries are following the lead of the western countries, including the United States, and you know, there hasn't been a breakthrough in medical science since antibiotics were invested in the 1930's. What has been done since WW II is to use advances of the industrial revolution to make medicine more technical, but no doctor thinks about the causes of diseases, they just do their cook-book thing, dodge malpractice, dodge medicare audits, do what the managed care insurance company wants, do as many procedures and make as much money as possible and "get out of the profession reasonably soon".

If you want to learn more, drop me a line at ecnal-c@hotmail.com and I will send you a few chapters of my book: Rheumatism, Enigma Unraveled.

Yours, Lance Christiansen, DO

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Others can help fill the void if they are attuned to how health and medical stories intersect with their own beats and how such stories touch the lives of real people. All reporters and assignment editors should look at the broad topic of health as a thick thread that runs through just about every newsroom beat.

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