"Health Care to Devour More of Pay" is the headline of the lead story on page one of the Albuquerque Journal today.
The Knight-Ridder story by Tony Pugh reports on new projections from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released yesterday.
That makes it a "hard news" story technically. But the story, which continues on page 2, is heavy on information from CMS, includes a few comments from experts and ties the projections to the Bush budget. That brings it very close to what we used to call a dope story.
Gosh, it’s been a long time since I’ve used that term and I am not sure how to define it, which is what I want to do. Let’s say the reporter fills it with information ("dope") on a single topic in order to give the reader a good sense of the situation or the lay of the land.
That contrasts with hard news, which gets its tough texture from an event. An example (also on page one today) is "Infant Found Safe."
Yet if the dope story is softer, it's not as soft as what’s called "news analysis," wherein the reporter gets still more room to make connections between facts.
(If I am dated or just being a dope here, I would appreciate editorial advice from any practicing newsman or newswoman reading this. Thank you.)
My point, in any case, is to praise dope stories and news analyses and editors who use them prominently.
I figure the dope story – because it’s not tied to a single event – enables the reporter to be more thoughtful and to give the reader more substance.
This can be critical. Imagine, for example, if reporters and editors had – over the years from the 1950s, say, to the ‘90s - supplied readers with thoughtful treatments of what was happening to medicine.
It’s quite possible, I think, that the public might have chosen a less awful health system than the Iron Maiden within which we now torture ourselves.
Putting it another way, the public never saw the process.
Or, the nation moved from professional medicine to the health business without getting a chance to vote on it.
That’s my thesis and I’m sticking to it.
Though I know that analyzing the press in terms of bias, political and otherwise
is lots sexier.