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Sarah Green, left, KHI News Service writer and web editor, discusses an upcoming story with Jim McLean, KHI Vice President for Public Affairs.
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A few years ago, the Kansas Health Institute saw that the mainstream media was struggling to cover policy issues, and it took action. KHI stepped in to fill that gap by creating a news service that specializes in health policy.
Today, KHI News Service has established itself as a source of must-read material for many lawmakers, state workers and health care providers. It averages about 1,500 unique online visitors every day, and this Kansas project has inspired organizations in Colorado, Florida and New York to consider launching similar news services. The Kaiser Family Foundation followed KHI’s lead and started a similar news service that has a bureau in Washington, D.C.
Mike Shields, managing editor of KHI News Service, says that a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation told KHI that he was very well aware of what KHI News Service was doing. “It helped shape his thinking on the decision to form their news service,” Shields says.
KHI News Service got its start in December 2006 after KHI kept track of the mainstream media’s reporting during the session when the Legislature was discussing the creation of the Kansas Health Policy Authority, the principal health care agency for the state of Kansas. “There were lots and lots of policy changes involved, and we monitored the stories that were being reported,” says Jim McLean, KHI’s vice president for public affairs. “There wasn’t much written about it, and what was written focused on the political football and not the policy issues. There were people out there engaged in policy discussions that were not being adequately covered, and we thought we could fill that void.”
So the KHI staff and board “decided to dedicate some core resources to see if we could make this happen,” McLean says.
“Of course we want to cover the Legislature and policy issues in some depth, but we knew also that there was an entire constituency around the state who cared deeply about these issues, but they weren’t going to be informed by their local newspapers,” McLean says. “I’m talking about people like local public health department workers and medical providers at safety net clinics. We keep them on top of these issues.”
KHI News Service contributes some of its stories to members of the Kansas Press Association, resulting in front-page bylines in many of the state’s newspapers, including the Topeka Capital-Journal. Every Monday, the KHI Web site features a new in-depth health policy story from the news service. A recent story focused on a pilot project that shows some promise for reducing Medicaid costs.
Most of the KHI News Service employees have been involved with journalism and political coverage in Kansas for a long time, so these reporters and editors aren’t strangers to the people at the Statehouse.
What’s next for KHI News Service? “We hope to do a better job of keeping track of what our lawmakers are doing in Washington,” McLean says. “One of the casualties of the downsizing of the media is that there is less and less attention paid to what state delegations are doing in Washington, what they’re saying, how they’re voting. So we see another opportunity there. We don’t know exactly how we’re going to meet that challenge, but we certainly see the need.”
Anyone can subscribe to KHI News Service. The process is easy and free. Just go to www.khi.org, click on the subscription link at the top of the home page and fill in some information about yourself. “That allows you to designate what your particular interests are, and we can tailor the alerts based on that,” Shields says. You can sign up for research updates, news alerts, e-newsletters, news releases and more.
“I think that we happen to be starting at a time when foundation- or nonprofit-supported news organizations are getting a lot more attention and consideration as possible ways to provide the coverage that matters to the public interest as opposed to public entertainment,” Shields says. “A lot is coming to pass with health policy. It’s a very interesting time to be involved with a service that specializes in that sort of coverage. You know you’re writing for an audience that really cares about the topic and they’re well informed themselves, so it’s kind of a reporter’s dream.”
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