Course Details

These days, you can't walk by a newsstand without seeing a story about health and medicine on a prominent magazine's cover. From The New Yorker to Glamour, there's never been more interest in medical topics. But how do you establish yourself or expand in this market and get a piece of the (cholesterol-free) pie? How do you get story ideas? How do you find sources? How do you tell a solid research article from junk?

Sound scary? It isn't. You might assume topics like weight loss, smoking cessation, and illnesses have been covered...well, to death. But there are always new studies coming out. And when those studies come out, you can pitch new trends and discoveries to editors before the editors themselves know about them. And there's nothing a men's or women's magazine editor loves more than a fresh twist on a health topic. Once you learn how to find studies, translate them out of medical jargon, you'll see how easy it is to write the article. For one, you already have your quotable experts...the people who did the study!

• How to find reliable medical experts and information
• What red flags to look out for
• How to read and interpret a medical study (and a crash course in biostatistics)
• What major terms mean, and where to find definitions and background
• How to make the most of an interview with a scientist
• How to find patient anecdotes
• How to pitch a medical story and who to pitch it to

Instructor Bio

Sally Lehrman's Courses

Sally Lehrman is an award-winning reporter and writer on medicine and science policy who has written for some of the top names in national print and broadcast media including Scientific American, Nature, Health, Salon.com, and the DNA Files, distributed by NPR. Her honors have included the 1995-96 John S. Knight Fellowship; a shared 2002 Peabody award, Peabody/Robert Wood Johnson Award for excellence in health and medical programming, and Columbia/Du Pont Silver Baton (for the DNA Files). She is author of News in a New America, a fresh take on developing an inclusive U.S. news media, and two chapters for textbooks on covering the sciences. She serves as at-large director and national diversity chair for the Society of Professional Journalists and is a USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism Expert Fellow on race. She works in her home office with her assistant Daisy, a Saint Bernard.

Testimonials

Sally's course was extremely valuable. She helped me pitch an article to Wired!. Sally ran the course as a workshop, was very organized, and gave terrific feedback. -- Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human

From Sally's class, I sold three assignments! The class was a constructive idea-generating environment that honed my editing skills to boot." -- Narasu Nebbapragada, freelance writer and technology magazine editor

"Not only was Sally's course an opportunity to share my work with a group of passionate, colorful, and opinionated individuals, it also provided guidance for packaging and selling my work." -- Paul Lee Cannon

"Sally's class was phenomenal. She has a huge amount of experience, which she shares to help you successfully pitch to and write for magazines, as well as to simply run the business side of a freelance career." -- Liza Boyd

"Sally brings enthusiasm and focus to her classes. I look forward to taking more classes from her in the future." -- Marie Watts, Adjunct Business Professor, Brooks College

"The environment Sally created was comfortable and supportive. She fostered a truly interactive experience." -- Bruce Johansen

"Sally presented useful, practical steps to preparing yourself for a freelance career. I now have blueprint and reference materials while I get my freelancing career off the ground." -- Joy Buchanan

"Sally helped me strengthen my writing, which resulted in not only several freelance gigs but also a widely-read book and a great job as editor of a Bay Area monthly." -- Lori Hope, author, editor, and speaker, lorihope.co