The Emerging Bull Market For Digital Healthcare Journalism

Last summer, at a time when many traditional publications were downsizing their health footprint, Politico made the bold decision to invest deeply in this area, and hired three strong healthcare journalists (Arthur Allen, Ashley Gold, and David Pittman) to staff a newly-launched eHealth PoliticoPro vertical, increasing the size of the Politico health team to eleven* – two editors and nine* reporters.

The eHealth expansion seems to be a success – an assessment based not only on the quality of the product (I am a paid subscriber), but more importantly, on the recent decision of Politico to expand their health offerings further; they have recently announced plans to add four additional health reporters and an additional editor, with the aim of increasing their coverage of payors, providers, and the pharmaceutical industry.

“Health policy is about a lot more than the next repeal vote, or even the next Supreme Court decision,” Health Care Editor Joanne Kenen explained to me in an email. “Health care is ingrained into our politics, it’s a fifth of our economy, and changes are going to affect every doctor, every hospital– and every patient – in the country in the months and years to come. Politico wants to capture every aspect of that.”

Politico is not the only digital media organization looking to healthcare as a growth area.  Earlier this year, Med City Media – a startup launched by Chris Seper in Ohio 2009 and focused on the “coverage of life science and healthcare innovation” – was acquired for an undisclosed price by Breaking Media, known for industry-targeted websites such as Dealbreaker, Above the Law, and Fashionista.

BuzzFeed, perhaps the most surprising new player in the healthcare media landscape, announced in late 2014 that widely respected journalist Virgina Hughes, known especially for her thoughtful (and popular) “Only Human” blog at National Geographic, was joining BuzzFeed News and would establish a health and science desk staffed by five reporters.  This seems to be part of a larger effort by BuzzFeed to add gravitas to a popular site perhaps best known for listicles, and to help the company – which last summer raised $50M from top tier VC Andreessen-Horowitz, and was valued at the time an estimated $850M – evolve into what new board member Chris Dixon calls a “preeminent media company.”

Finally, this week also saw the much-heralded (listen to this Mendelspod podcast) return of veteran biotech journalist Luke Timmerman, who launched “The Timmerman Report” (again, I am a paid subscriber), which thus far seems a bit like Xconomy (for which Timmerman used to write) mashed up with the New York Post’s Page Six — which is to say, consistently informative, and just a little bit gossipy.

The prominent ascent of digital healthcare journalism reflects as much as anything else the ability, in the current media ecosystem, to identify talented emerging writers and match them with consumer segments interested in their voice and perspective, representing a win for talented journalists — assuming the clicks can be monetized — and for readers, or at least those willing and able to pay for some of these costly offerings.