Freelance work for American Association of Healthcare Journos

The Association of Health Care Journalists seeks freelance assistance in building helpful and dynamic web pages for fellow journalists trying to keep up with the implementation of health reform and the continuing health care debate.

This year-to-year commitment would include writing tip sheets for journalists, summarizing key issues, webcasting short interviews with top experts, and identifying good story examples and important dates for journalists. This writer would work with AHCJ's Web editor to encourage reader interaction and should be willing to share knowledge at AHCJ events. Experience in covering health reform a must. Multimedia experience a plus.

This freelance work will pay up to $12,000 a year.

Send letter stating applicable experience with resume (and story links) to champion@healthjournalism.org by Jan. 28. Notes of inquiry can be sent to the same address.

Position details

We will be looking for a lead editor or "champion" in each of several topic areas we want to feature on the healthjournalism.org website. These new "learning centers" are expertise areas we feel are essential to reporting on health or health care.

The health reform topic champion will:

(at the front end)

• write a collection of concise background briefs – explainers on the various elements going into the health reform law
• set up a timeline showing when each piece of the law goes into effect
• write or assign explainer pieces to go with each of the timeline elements, including localized story suggestions

(on-going)

• contribute a blog item once a week to AHCJ's blog, Covering Health, that points out good work being done around the country or otherwise prepares reporters to advance their coverage
• Search for key health reform-related events to add to AHCJ's Web calendar
• Review crowd-sourced suggestions once a week and determine which to add to our resources
• Arrange for occasional audio or video interviews with a health reform expert or fellow journalist
• Assign occasional first-person stories/tip boxes by other journalists ("how I covered this aspect of health reform")