Here in the Modern Healthcare editorial laboratory, better known as our Chicago newsroom, we're always working on better ways to serve the business news and information needs of our readers. Late last week, we pulled the sheet off three of our latest creations. We redesigned and made significant editorial content changes to our Web site, modernhealthcare.com, and our two daily electronic newsletters, the Daily Dose and Health IT Strategist.
We expanded the community section on Modern Healthcare Online with several new features. The first is "Daily Dialogue'' where readers can react to our coverage of news and trends and share their opinions with other readers. We'd like to think of it as a responsible blog as we require contributors to identify themselves, including their titles, affiliations and locations. Another new community subsection is "Reporter's Notebook.''
Our staff of 28 editors and reporters attends hundreds of hearings, press conferences, briefings, confabs, trade shows and other industry events each year. Some of the more interesting and informative observations from those events often don't make it into our regular news and features coverage. The "Reporter's Notebook'' allows our staff to tell readers what happened before a press conference or in between educational sessions at a trade show. Their insight will add rich context to our traditional hard-nosed business reporting. This section allows readers to comment on our staff's musings. Readers also can comment on two other features of the expanded community section: a monthly guest commentary and a featured letter of the week.
HITS itself has cut loose with more than 20,000 subscribers in its first year as a daily. It was monthly from its May 2004 launch through December 2005. HITS, too, will link to our biweekly Web poll on Modern Healthcare Online. Modern Healthcare produces two other electronic publications, the monthly Modern Physician "e-zine,'' and the Modern Healthcare Alert, our breaking e-mail news service. We've improved both as well. We made Modern Physician, with more than 13,000 subscribers, a little easier on the eyes with a full-bleed front-page photo and larger table of contents. The Alert, with more than 70,000 subscribers, has become a true news bulletin with short one- and two-sentence news flashes. That's allowed us to get out breaking news faster with expanded coverage that day in either the Daily Dose or on the Web site. Well, it's back to the lab to see what our staff is working on next.
