WBUR’s Sacha Pfeiffer is covering swine flu this fall. Her beat centers on Boston — a hub for hospitals and universities — so she’s making daily phone calls to check up on medical news and college cases. She shared some reporting tips with me yesterday.
First off, she said, “all states and most cities have public-health departments. They’re definitely the first places to start.” (You can find links to those health departments on our states/communities page.) She added that while most departments have an H1N1 section on their websites, the information tends to be standard fare from the CDC. So she starts with a phone call to a department’s media-relations office. Because “the state is trying to have select people be spokespeople,” this typically points her to the same “go-to” sources that other reporters are using, but it’s a good start.
As she’s gotten deeper into the story, Pfeiffer has built up her network of sources though old-fashioned phone legwork. She’s found this to be more useful and efficient than sitting through H1N1 seminars and such. Making calls is also necessary because, she says, “in Massachusetts, there’s not yet an emergency, so the state can’t mandate — it can only make suggestions — so I have to call individual towns and schools” to find out what actions they’re taking.
I asked Pfeiffer how she decides, as a local reporter, whether a story is newsworthy. Her answer: it’s all about context. If, say, Boston University has 20 kids with probable H1N1 in its clinic, she’ll ask health officials or other colleges for their numbers for comparison. If BU stands out, there’s a story. If it doesn’t, there’s not.
Pfeiffer has been filing swine-flu stories both on-air and online. Generally, she says, “the web has more room for more information,” so if she has 45 seconds on the air, she’ll add extras online. Here’s one way she repurposed two broadcast segments into web content: her local Morning Edition host debriefed her on-air about H1N1, and then she took the interviews and turned them into written Q&As. Find them here and here.
Her biggest cautionary note involved the numbers. “Most states,” she said, “aren’t testing for swine flu anymore. They’re just assuming you have H1N1.” So the data are pretty back-of-the-envelope. The important thing, she underlined, is to reflect the uncertainty by reporting, for example, “34 suspected cases” rather than “34 cases” — unless you know for sure.
Check out more of Pfeiffer’s swine-flu reporting here and WBUR’s H1N1 page here.
[Update 13 October 2009: Pfeiffer just posted another Q&A fashioned from an on-air segment.]
