The NPF Newsbag

The Future at 6 AM

PARIS: NPF recently held a program in Paris for journalists concerned with vaccines, especially HIV vaccines. Paris is six-hours ahead of U.S. East Coast time, nine hours ahead of the West Coast. Every morning I started my day as I do back in Washington -- going through the NY Times and the Washington Post. I did it on my handheld device, which in my case is a Blackberry. Half the time I did it before I got out of bed. And that convenience is the practical reality we are dealing with everyday.

New Hope/No Hope, Or Somewhere in the Middle

PARIS: The late, great science writer Victor Cohn of The Washington Post used to say that most published health journalism fell into one of two categories -- new hope, or no hope. "Breakthrough," "miracle," "scientists now say ... are confused ... shake their heads," etc. are the terms of art we've all used. The problem is, life is a lot more complex than a headline, and this is never more true than with a new HIV vaccine study, just released.

NPF Awards Deadline Monday Oct. 5

 

The deadline is fast approaching for three major journalism awards from the National Press Foundation. All of them have a deadline of 5 pm on Monday October 5. The awards are:

 

* The Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Coverage of Congress. Two awards, $5,000 each, for print and broadcast.  Broadcast can include digital or any non-print medium.

 

* The Berryman Award forEditorial cartooning. $2,500 award. Animated cartoons, as well as print, are welcome.

 

* The Online Journalism Award. $2,500 award. Entries may be from individuals or organizations. Original content is critical. 

 

The awards will be presented at our Annual Awards Dinner, Tuesday February 16, 2010. For more details go to www.nationalpress.org, and click on awards. 

Prince of Darkness (Maybe) Dies at 78

WASHINGTON: When I was just starting out, in the mid-1970's, I got a freelance assignment from the Los Angeles Times' Sunday sup, called West,to do a profile of a now-legendary California campaign manager named Joseph R. Cerrell. The idea of the story was that I would follow Cerrell around as he worked with various candidates. That led me to Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey, and that led me to columnist Bob Novak, who died this week. It was from Novak that I learned one of the best lessons a young reporter could ever learn. 

Highlights from Days 3 and 4 of the J2J Conference

Our last two days in Cape Town for the Journalist to Journalist HIV/AIDS training were very busy and packed a lot of information for our fellows.  A detailed account of what happened during days three and four of the conference comes after the jump.  If you are interested finding resources from our time in Cape Town, we have uploaded PowerPoint as well as audio from a majority of the speakers to our website.

Live Blogging From the J2J Conference: Day 2

10:00 AM - Aeras Global President and CEO Jerald Sadoff announced that on 15 July, 2009 Aeras conducted the first efficacy trial of a new vaccine for tuberculosis in more than 80 years, on a baby in South Africa.  Dr. Sadoff's PowerPoint presentation is available now on our website, and audio will be uploaded shortly.