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.’”