ADVANCE Launches Aspirations in Publishing
A funny thing happened on the way to the reporter's pencil and notebook.
ADVANCE for Health Information Executives welcomed many IT executives' expertise to our pages over the years, and they ended up using that relationship to launch their own publishing "careers" and "experiences," leaving for other publications.
This came to mind as I paged through some older (and much thicker, I might add) issues of ADVANCE for Health Information Executives from our beginnings in 1997 and several issues from early 2000. Two people that had their beginnings on our pages and went on to other publications were Bryan Bergeron, MD, and Tim Dotson, RPh, MBA.
Bryan wrote for ADVANCE in 1997-2000, then went on to become an author of books and still serves on the advisory board of our competitor, Healthcare Informatics. And, Tim, who also wrote for us in 2003 and 2004 about his organization's experiences in deploying clinical information technologies, went on to work for another of our competitors, Inside Healthcare Computing, where he serves as executive editor. Tim now works for a trade journal publisher having health care industry experience as a pharmacy director, software analyst and IS director for two health systems.
So, practically speaking, those who have gotten their start in health IT publishing have had some involvement, initially, with our magazine. It's important to note as every trade publication's page counts drop, ADVANCE launched many a publishing experience, albeit, career.
I was having breakfast with a CIO on our editorial advisory board a few years ago and he mentioned how unique it was that a CIO could pick up the phone or drop an e-mail to one of our editors and get an article published. "That's a unique opportunity," a colleague of his outside health care had told him.
Places to write
And, speaking of people who work with ADVANCE, John Halamka, CIO, at CareGroup, has served as one of our distinguished editorial advisory board members for a number of years now. John has done some of his own writing -- extensively, I might add -- but it's not for one of competitors (phew, thankfully). Instead, he blogs about his experience as a health care CIO.
I read with interest John's recent blog post about his corporate and home work space (http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-work-spaces.html). John writes: "Home office -- At home, I do not have a separate office, but work from the family room. All of my blogs and articles are written in my Morris chair which I've used for the past 15 years. I also have a small writing desk, an incense burner, and a fragment of a tree that's hundreds of years old. While climbing, I found the tree at 13,000 feet and noticed something remarkable about it. As a seedling, the tree grew from under a rock, eventually surrounded the rock, and split the rock in half. To me, that's a great metaphor for perseverance. You'll find a cup of green tea but no papers, files or clutter in my home office space."
I read with special interest where John writes at home and how he writes with an incense burner nearby and maybe even a cup of green tea. I looked around my cluttered desk at work and here's what I found: a red water bottle that I fill from the water purifying system in our cafeteria two or three times a day. An empty coffee cup where I pour my freshly brewed Starbucks Breakfast Blend each morning sat next to my monitor. There's a stapler. What's that, you ask? Go and Google it. I bet John doesn't use a stapler because he has little or no paper.
I also have several file folders opened, with notes scribbled in pen on legal pad pages or steno notebook pages. There are pictures of my wife and two daughters, and a picture of me with my "hand on the throttle" when I drove a steam locomotive for fun.
I chuckled when I read John's blog about his sitting in a Morris chair with incense scent trailing toward the ceiling and sipping green tea.
I will probably always write from behind a computer screen. Besides, my eyes are so accustomed now to writing under bright fluorescent lighting that I probably wouldn't know what to do if the lighting were any different. Oh, sure, I do some of my creative writing from a comfortable reclining chair (Raymour & Flanagan variety) in my living room. Trains, sure it's about trains. Currently I'm writing a short story about a boy who gets locked in a model railroad club on a rainy Saturday and has the chance to run as many model locomotives as he can in a 16-hour span. And occasionally I sip my own favorite wine, too.
I knew a colleague here at Merion Publications who joined the editorial ranks thinking that writing was a glamorous profession, where we all sat around conjugating verbs and debating sentence structures.
Honestly, it's not like that. Most of the time you're writing against a hard deadline; you're trying to siphon blood from a stone and your head hurts beyond belief.
I remember seeing Steve Lopez, the author of the new novel, "The Soloist," which is now a movie, speak at a Mt. Airy Learning Tree event when he was a columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Those attending the community event were peppering Lopez with questions, wanting to know the details on what it's like to work for a busy metropolitan newspaper. Lopez chided the questioners, wondering why they didn't want to talk about their "elected officials" -- he used the term loosely, I might add -- including Woodrow Wilson Goode, Philadelphia's mayor at the time, who literally burned down a city block while police confronted the group, MOVE. Lopez asked why those in attendance wouldn't rather discuss the corruption in City Hall and what could be done to get the politicians to address the public's concerns. They jumped at the opportunity and an interesting dialogue took place.
So, yes, blogs have certainly energized my writing and creativity, but for about 75 percent of my work, it's regular writing, following the journalistic style and skills I learned and honed over the years. It's about Who, What, When, Why and How in the lead of the story. And, it's done without the incense burner and green tea.
What makes the writing interesting, is catchy and interesting leads and the overall article that captures the reader's attention. This still holds true today.