The message behind medical stories

January 16th, 2005

What are the stories your readers really care about?

Have you noticed the dramatic increase of medical stories in your daily newspaper over the last 10 years or so? The thought struck me as I scanned today's New York Times and bumped into the headline “Gene Increases Diabetes Risk, Scientists Find.”

My own daily newspaper is no different. When I was a cub reporter, medical stories were usually reserved for what was euphemistically called the “lifestyles” section. Now not a week goes by without several medical stories on the front page. In fact, stories taken from medical magazines like the New England Journal of Medicine are often rushed into the daily newspaper before they appear in the Journal, in a kind of preemptive strike.

You don’t have to be Inspector Poirot to figure out the reason for it. We aging baby boomers are self-obsessed and fascinated by any fact that might help us live longer or live better. (As long as we can just read about it and don’t have to adjust our diets or anything…)

But there’s also a message in here for corporate communicators. If you want to increase readership, figure out the topics that your audience is really interested in. This isn't as self-evident as it might sound. Too many corporate publications are filled with the subjects that only management wants to talk about.

Now I’m not suggesting cross-word puzzles and gossip columns. What I’m saying is that there are always hot  buttons, and you need to make sure you're pushing a few of them. In one company I work for, the hot-button is safety. I know from phone calls and letters to the editor that safety stories are hot-hot-hot with my readers. (Fortunately, in this case, management cares about safety, so the stories are easy to write.)

What are the issues that touch your reader’s lives? What do they really, really care about? What do they talk about in the cafeteria? These are the topics that need to make their way into your publication.