Rural Health Care Access, Reading Materials

Internet users can give websites a thumbs up or thumbs down in less than the blink of an eye, according to a study by Canadian researchers.

Andy Goodman gives tips for project promotion geared at telling a "good story" about your efforts. If you can't tell a good story about your work, how will you convince others of the news worthiness of your project?

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation produces publications that are available at no cost on their Web site. A sampling of titles:
• A Nation at Risk: Obesity in the United States
• Active Living Diversity Project
• Dynamics of Race, Culture and Key Indicators of Health . . .
• Healthy Places, Healthy People: Promoting Public Health & Physical Activity through Community Design

In her Des Moines Register newspaper commentary, Maria Kefalas writes, "One of the surest routes to the American Dream is a college education, but recent news accounts would suggest that this road to social mobility has created a rural 'brain drain'." She examines some of the assumptions made about the talents and abilities of young people who stay and those who leave for the big city, through her participation in a study by the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood.

Third World Majority is a media training and production resource center run by a collective of Filipino and Tamil women "dedicated to developing new media practices that affect global justice and social change through grassroots political organizing". TWM is working with Center for Reflective Community Practice at MIT to develop an on-line digital storytelling space. Highly recommended: their Digital Divide manifesto and story archive (story browsing hint: click on and take your pick). Their web URL says it all: "Culture Is A Weapon".

Interesting summer reading turned up in a recent Poynter column on keeping roles straight if/when the relationship between journalists and their sources begins to evolve. This situation could pertain to small town or tribal journalists, or to reporters covering a beat where over time they might become closer to sources. As author O. Ricardo Pimentel writes, "...the truth is that both people in such a relationship should just lay their cards on the table. Get the ground rules straight...What we're trying to avoid here is any misunderstanding that will sour either a business relationship or a friendship. But both of you should be on the same page about whether it is one or the other." Read more on-line:

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation established the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program at Howard University to honor the legacy of former Foundation Trustee and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and to expand the pool of students of color interested in the field of health policy. The Foundation has created a brochure highlighting the first five years of the Barbara Jordan Scholars Program and profiling the Scholars (college seniors) who have participated in it. Download the 56-page .pdf brochure on-line to see pictures and read more about each Scholar.

The New York Times has published a series of essays on class in America. The Web version includes plenty of multi-media presentation and resources for teachers and students. Of special interest to Sound Partners' colleagues may be the audio-visual essay of two New Yorkers each of whom had a heart attack in 2004. How they were treated and the story of their recoveries is told by the individuals involved. (Free, one-time registration required.)

Local commercial television news has tremendous reach and potential impact on Americans. But the many Americans who get their health and medical news and information from local television news are receiving a distorted picture. Remedies for these ills are well within reach: training, more time, and more effort writes Gary Schwitzer, assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

By 2007 the average American will spend 3,874 hours per year (about 10.5 hrs/day) with the major consumer media. The "Investment Considerations for the Communications Industry” report cites the increasing personal use of wired cable, Internet, home video and video games. 29 percent of consumers now feel overwhelmed by the volume of media options available to them. How will you distinguish your Sound Partners' projects from the rest?