The Kaiser Daily Health Reports are daily publications targeted at audiences in the topic areas of HIV/AIDS and health policy. Published each morning, the reports aim to provide objective, balanced and complete coverage of these fields to an international readership that hails from across the political and social spectrum.
The reports are published on behalf of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation by The Advisory Board Company, a Washington, D.C.-based for-profit health care think tank. As such, all story selection and editorial decisions are made by an independent staff of writers and editors employed by The Advisory Board Company.
The Daily Reports are “cover-the-coverage” documents, drawing information from over 300 print, Internet and multimedia sources. Each day, beginning at 6 a.m., staff members scour these sources seeking information relevant to each publication’s audience, then excerpt and synthesize the stories, pulling out and summarizing the most important facts and quotes from the various sources. In order to produce documents with the greatest utility, writers and editors work to ensure that stories are:
- Relevant. The stories should be either something readers need to know to effectively do their jobs or something they may find interesting as a function of their positions. This distinction is best highlighted through an example: someone working in HIV/AIDS care needs to know about a change in HIV treatment guidelines, as it may impact their daily life; they may find interesting – though not life-changing – a story about an HIV-positive person winning an employment-discrimination lawsuit.
- Non-partisan and unbiased. To ensure that information is portrayed as accurately as possible, stories must be neutral in tone and reflect the diversity of the readership.
- Concise in writing. Recognizing that readers are busy, coverage must focus on only the most important issues in a particular news story, separating the key facts from extraneous details.
- Comprehensive in source. Stories must reflect a breadth of coverage from diverse national and local sources, in an effort to alert readers to smaller, regional issues that might have national implications.
- Indicative of media attention. The publications must demonstrate to readers the amount and type of coverage a story received in the media, helping them understand the public’s perception of the news.
As the reports are “cover-the-coverage” documents, staff members should do little original reporting of their own. When possible, however – recognizing the time constraints inherent to a daily publication – the staff should make every effort to determine the accuracy of stories covered or to provide additional information to clarify confusing details. This information should be collected through both secondary and primary research, with a goal of giving readers the most complete story possible within the necessary limitations of the reports’ morning deadlines. Editors may also choose to hold stories in an effort to ensure that the documents provide the most accurate information, although given the publications’ cover-the-coverage role, this action will be taken reluctantly and only in cases of obvious, major errors.
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