Today was deadline day at Healthcare Informatics—the day we file the finished stories we’ve been working on all month. A busy day. Today was also my day to write our daily news. Now, every day, a ton of your press releases floods our inboxes at HCI. We look at them, and news we think may be interesting or relevant to our readers makes it onto our website. Now, I know you spent a lot of time writing that release. I also know some magazines run your press release as is. And call it news.
We don’t.
We care a lot about our readers. And for that reason we don’t waste their valuable reading time with superlatives from your CEO about how your product is the best thing since sliced bread.
I take it out.
I take most of it out.
I look at news from a reader's point of view. So here’s what I want to know if I’m a reader:
If this news concerns a hospital, I want to know how many beds it has. Where it’s located? Is it part of a network? Not for profit status wouldn’t hurt.
And it’s your company—why can’t you just put down where your corporate headquarters are so I don’t have to look it up? I mean, it’s YOUR company, right?
If it’s a system, and it’s integrated with other systems in an interesting way, tell me. And tell me where they’re located, too. If it’s really interesting, it’s going to wind up a feature story,
Anyway, I don’t hold it against you. Whether you send me a news item that takes me an hour to rewrite or not, if it’s important it will still run.
I just won’t love you anymore.
