Orthopedic journalism and Orthopedics Today

Issue: August 2005

ByDouglas W. Jackson, MD

Douglas W. Jackson, MD [photo] --- Douglas W. Jackson, Chief Medical Editor

Orthopedics Today is a monthly scientific newspaper and those of us working to produce it are orthopedic journalists. Our goal is to provide you with what you want to know before you realize you want to know about it. This means presenting different perspectives on topics from within and outside our profession.

Our primary focus is to present stories about cutting-edge technology and new treatments within the field of orthopedics. We constantly review the current thinking, how it is changing and how it is being challenged across the entire scope of orthopedics. We want to challenge your thinking and try to stimulate you to pursue topics in more depth, as you are inclined. We continually present alternatives and reasons to consider changing how you do things. Many stories offer new and practical information that readers can use immediately in their practices. In addition, we write about interesting new clinically applicable research in related areas as well as those occurring within musculoskeletal basic science.

Many readers tell us they have come to depend on our accurate and reliable, user-friendly and interesting monthly briefings as a key source of professional updating. We work to maintain this standard and are committed to vigilant reporting with as little bias and distortion as possible.

Valuing reader feedback

Our editorial staff (myself included) and owners (Slack Inc.) make every effort to reach for excellence and take a great deal of pride in this publication. I have the opportunity to travel around this country to meetings and speak with many of you about Orthopedics Today (OT). In addition, we receive letters, phone calls and e-mails giving us overwhelming support for what we do. Your constructive suggestions lead us to make changes when applicable. On occasion we hear negative comments and usually respond and/or publish these criticisms and differing opinions.

“I feel strongly that you are in a position to read the articles and form your own opinions.”

But beyond our attempts to present balanced, forward-looking coverage of our profession, I feel strongly that you are in a position to read the articles and form your own opinions. I do not feel obligated to select only articles that present randomized, double-blinded studies with the necessary controls. We provide a reference in most all of our articles regarding where we got the story and how to pursue it further. While we are not a peer-reviewed publication, we do usually present criticisms, support and discussions related to many of the articles and topics. We frequently solicit comments from experts and use opinions from our medical and industrial advisory boards.

OT articles come mostly from our coverage of major meetings, where some peer-review occurs through the program committee’s selection of papers. We also prepare stories based on published articles in orthopedic journals, specialty journals and other publications of interest.

The information glut

Today there is an information glut in every field. Written traditional journalism, meanwhile, is being challenged by high-tech independent “bloggers” that can put information and advertisements in front of you directly, with no layer of editors in between. They can respond almost in real time and focus on a narrow set of hot issues of their choice. We hope that amid this information deluge our publication can help provide a refuge of order and proportion.

The biggest challenge I have as medical editor is self-aggrandizing and self-promoting articles keeping out of our publication. Because we have a large, influential subscriber base and a quick monthly turnaround, many surgeons would like coverage of a research idea they are doing before it has been presented at a major meeting or published.

Some have publicists, marketing specialists, company officials or friends who try to influence me, or our writers and editors. Many startup companies, in particular, have a strategy to get something in Orthopedics Today to jumpstart their marketing efforts.

At the same time, we are a for-profit publication and depend on advertising revenue to provide you with your free monthly copy — mailed directly to you — and to support our comprehensive, largely free-access Web site, OrthoSuperSite.com. We make every effort to identify advertisement and commercial slants clearly and separate it from selected articles. A few of you have proposed that we refuse certain advertisers based on things you feel are not appropriate (eg, those doing direct-to-consumer marketing). We are not ethicists for industry advertising but do on occasion have in-depth discussions with those groups. I personally have always found the majority of the orthopedic industry to be excellent to work with and willing to discuss and defend their positions if they differ.

Medical intelligence

In conclusion, I find being medical editor and being involved in orthopedic journalism stimulating and quite rewarding. My greatest satisfactions come from your feedback, in being able to constantly review the new thinking and approaches in our field, soliciting your input on specific issues and working with a great, talented and professional staff. Meeting your orthopedic information needs keeps us successful. We are a scientific newspaper and in the end allow you to decide what information is most useful to you. Our mission is to provide you with an important information service by screening out a lot of material and presenting potentially valuable pieces to you in a user-friendly way.

You might also be interested to know that OT is the most widely read, independent monthly newspaper in the field. We mail it to most every orthopedic surgeon in the United States — about 25,000 in all — plus thousands of allied health and industry professionals. OT has a team of 10 writers, editors and support people who devote 100% of their time to following orthopedics.