Health News
- Newspapers Large And Small Inform Readers (and Even Non-subscribers) About The Complexities Of Health-care Reform
By Al Cross Kentucky Health News, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues In about two months, states and the federal government will open online marketplaces for health insurance, which will also offer subsidies based on income and the opportunity...
- Rural Newspapers Don't Write A Lot Of Health Stories ? But They Should, Expert Says
?If a newspaper can?t stand for better health and better health care, then what in the world can it stand for?? This was the galvanizing statement of a talk today by Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, who keynoted...
- Rural Newspapers Have Power To Influence People's Health, But Few Health Articles Are Being Published In Kentucky, Study Finds
By Tara KaprowyKentucky Health News Though studies suggest that newspapers can influence people's decisions about their health and can even lead to public-policy changes, for the most part Kentucky's rural newspaper editors are publishing very...
- In Front-page Editorial, Rural Weekly In Adair County Demands That Board Members Of County-owned Hospital Resign
In our experience, most weekly newspapers don't have editorial pages, much less editorials, so when one puts an editorial on the front page and also runs an editorial about the decision, and the work is well-written and well-argued, it's worth...
- Adair County Community Voice Newspaper, Local Health Department Sponsor Community Health Challenge
Residents of Adair County should be getting more fit in the new year, thanks to community-wide competition sponsored by the local health department and one of the Columbia newspapers. The Adair County Community Voice and the Lake Cumberland-Adair County...
Health News
Weekly newspaper in Adair County does a special section on health and sends it to everyone in the county
Special sections on health are good for community newspapers and their readers. Health-care providers have money for advertising in such sections, and a section focused on health can have more impact on readers than individual, occasional stories.
Based on a pilot project it oversaw in 2007, the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues began recommending to rural newspapers that they schedule health sections as part of editions that are mailed to every postal customer in a paper's home county, a standard circulation-building technique. If a newspaper wants to help improve the health of its community, why not reach everyone in the community?
Last week, one Kentucky newspaper did that. The Adair County Community Voice of Columbia included a 10-page broadsheet section on health in an edition that was mailed to everyone in the county. And though it got no advertising from the local public hospital, with which it has been embroiled in an open-meetings dispute, it did get ads from hospitals in other counties.
Newspapers can mail up to 10 percent of their annual circulation to non-subscribers in their home county at subscriber rates, and can sell "sponsored circulation" to pay the extra cost of printing and postage for the extra copies. The 2007 pilot project with another Kentucky weekly, The Berea Citizen, found that non-subscribers said they were more likely to subscribe if the paper regularly included health information. For a copy of the report on the project, click here. The health section is not online, but PDFs of its pages are posted on the Institute website in a 4.4 MB file, here.
- Newspapers Large And Small Inform Readers (and Even Non-subscribers) About The Complexities Of Health-care Reform
By Al Cross Kentucky Health News, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues In about two months, states and the federal government will open online marketplaces for health insurance, which will also offer subsidies based on income and the opportunity...
- Rural Newspapers Don't Write A Lot Of Health Stories ? But They Should, Expert Says
?If a newspaper can?t stand for better health and better health care, then what in the world can it stand for?? This was the galvanizing statement of a talk today by Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, who keynoted...
- Rural Newspapers Have Power To Influence People's Health, But Few Health Articles Are Being Published In Kentucky, Study Finds
By Tara KaprowyKentucky Health News Though studies suggest that newspapers can influence people's decisions about their health and can even lead to public-policy changes, for the most part Kentucky's rural newspaper editors are publishing very...
- In Front-page Editorial, Rural Weekly In Adair County Demands That Board Members Of County-owned Hospital Resign
In our experience, most weekly newspapers don't have editorial pages, much less editorials, so when one puts an editorial on the front page and also runs an editorial about the decision, and the work is well-written and well-argued, it's worth...
- Adair County Community Voice Newspaper, Local Health Department Sponsor Community Health Challenge
Residents of Adair County should be getting more fit in the new year, thanks to community-wide competition sponsored by the local health department and one of the Columbia newspapers. The Adair County Community Voice and the Lake Cumberland-Adair County...