What Readers Are Telling Us
Editorial Update
Hi,
On completing four years in operations this month, we took the time to pause and reflect, and to speak with our readers.
We are pleased to share with you some initial feedback from our active engagement with readers in recent days.
Earlier this month we had an online dialogue with readers from different countries. We followed this up with our first in-person event in Geneva this past week including a discussion on the role of journalism in global health diplomacy. These events have been useful in taking our readers behind-the-scenes to discuss our craft and editorial priorities, as much as listening to what readers have had to say.
These interactions have been valuable in helping us understand reader preferences. We will be taking these into consideration as we fine-tune editorial and operational priorities in the coming months.
I am happy to share some of these insights with the hope that many more of you engage with us and carry this forward. Do write back by responding to this edition, or leaving comments below.
It has been our absolute delight and privilege to service this highly engaged readership. It will be our earnest effort to continue being an effective and honest interlocutor in the global health ecosystem in Geneva without fear or favor.
Support public interest global health journalism, become a paying subscriber. Tracking global health policy-making in Geneva is tough and expensive. Help us raise important questions, and in keeping an ear to the ground. Readers paying for our work makes this possible.
Our gratitude to our subscribers who help us stay in the game!
Watch out for our reporting on the ongoing negotiations at WHO next week.
Best,
Priti
Feel free to write to us: patnaik.reporting@gmail.com or Follow us on Twitter: @filesgeneva
I. POINTERS FROM READER FEEDBACK
With 6,000 readers across 140 countries, our audience is diverse and multifaceted. While all of them are global health experts in various forms, their entry points into the field are varied.
When I began Geneva Health Files four years ago, it was intended as a service for diplomats, and other stakeholders in Geneva – to help them connect the dots – and to look at global health with an inter-disciplinary approach including not just in scientific and technical terms, but also from the lens of economics, trade, governance and politics. Today, 85% of our readership is located outside of Geneva.
Apart from health and trade negotiators, we have policymakers, activists, scholars, the private sector, lobbyists, and students, among our readers. Reader expectations and needs from this service are different according to each group’s needs. We try our best to integrate reader preferences on content and formats, while retaining our editorial judgement. We constantly seek to optimize our overall strategy to deliver value through our journalism.
The following is a high-level analysis based on reader feedback.
· Readers value the neutrality of our journalism
· Recognition for consistency in frequency and depth of coverage
· Value for real-time reporting that has an impact on ongoing discussions
· More investigative reporting
· Demand for analyses into the political underpinnings of health policy-making
· Appreciation for simplifying the technical and legal matters in global health
· Appetite for reporting on global governance models across policy spheres
· Demand for more explanatory journalism
· Demystifying negotiations (“what does bracketed text mean?”)
· Demand for probing prevailing narratives (“The Why”)
· Request for referencing historical perspectives in current policy discussions
· More interviews, features and portraits
· Greater appetite for opinion pieces
· Appreciation for Guest Essays
· Encouragement for us to take positions on issues (and to state them clearly)
· Greater diversity in the voices we bring to the fore
· Deeper engagement and outreach with “capital” based readers
· Shorter stories in addition to long form analyses
· Publishing more books based on our reporting
· More audio and video formats of storytelling
In addition to the very solid feedback on the use of our journalism as a resource, there is also appreciation for our “value-based” journalism – that shows we care not only about our craft, but also the subjects we write on. We are grateful for this feedback.
The practice of journalism is a political process by the sheer reality of operating in the public domain. While our personal politics are above and distinct, from our straight reporting of facts, we are unafraid to take positions and state them accordingly.
We will carefully review and synthesize of some of these suggestions in line with the news cycle and our own resource limitations. As a niche reporting initiative, we strive to pay close attention to reader preferences.
II. INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM FESTIVAL IN PERUGIA, ITALY
[APRIL 18-20, 2024]
Global Health is our community, but journalism is our home.
We are pleased to be at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia next week. We are hosting a side-event on Global Health Journalism and Media Entrepreneurship.
Global health is everybody’s business. Help us probe the dynamics where science and politics interface with interests. Support investigative global health journalism.