Reporters and editors these days sometimes run into the HIPAA roadblock. HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. It was designed to allow individuals to keep their health insurance when they changed jobs but it also requires medical record confidentiality. And it’s that last requirement that sometimes puts journalists and government officials on a collision course because journalists want information and sometimes officials cite HIPAA as the reason they can’t disclose it — and correctly so — but other times they incorrectly cite HIPAA as the reason they can’t divulge information.

Recently, a Kentucky editor called the KPA office in Frankfort asking whether county officials could refuse to disclose certain information because of HIPAA. The short answer is HIPAA only pertains to medical professionals and other designated personnel working in health care.

The Association of Health Care Journalists has an excellent web site and a tip sheet that addresses journalists’ concerns about HIPAA and what and who falls under it and what and who doesn’t.

Click below for the link to the Association of Health Care Journalists web site and tip sheet for journalists:

Click here for tips at healthjournalism.org

By Teresa Revlett
KPS Director of Sales

As the New Year draws closer, we are feverishly working on the KPA directory for 2010. Please remember to send in your rate and data sheets so that your newspaper’s information can be updated.

We use information from the rate and data sheets for the entire year. It tells about personnel changes that may have occurred within the past year and allows us to have the correct rates on file for our clients’ use.

Deadline on the rate and data sheet says November 13, but as a charter member of the Kentucky Procrastinator’s Association, we are still taking any changes. The KPS staff would appreciate complete media kits with rate cards so that we will know about any specials that may be available. If your newspaper sells website advertising, don’t forget to send that information in too.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard has launched a comprehensive online guide to covering pandemic flu. Read the rest of this entry

Amid a sea of orange, the Tennessee Press Association completed the judging November 13 of KPA’s Excellence in Kentucky Newspapers – 2009 competition. The judging took place Nov. 12-13, first in Nashville, then with another group in Knoxville.

When I arrived at the TPA headquarters in Knoxville, a photo greeted me on the front door. Welcome to Big Orange Country, David Thompson! Okay, I could handle that reception. Read the rest of this entry

The News Content Service (NCS), KPA’s newest member service, went online six weeks ago. So far, 36 Kentucky newspapers and online news organizations have signed on as participants. Last week, NCS distributed 83 state news and feature stories or an average of 16.6 stories each day Monday through Friday.

Of the current 36 participants, six are Kentucky dailies with more to come.   Read the rest of this entry

By Nick Brockman, Madisonville Messenger

At a college basketball game, the best seat in the house is courtside, but local resident Charlie Hust typically observes a contest from on the court, baseline to baseline as he officiates.

Hust, owner and publisher of the Journal Enterprise in Providence, has been officiating women’s college basketball for six seasons and will begin his second year in the Southeastern Conference this fall. Read the rest of this entry

Jeremy Horwitch, editor-in-chief at iLounge.com, thinks it’s a done deal. Brian Lam of Gizmodo.com says he has sources from major newspapers and book publishers who have told him they’ve been in conversation with Apple about the new device.

Daniel Lyons, in the October 15 issue of Newsweek, seems to think the new apparatus might warrant all the speculation, even though it’s yet to be released. Jason O’Grady, editor of PowerPage. org, wrote in July 2008 that Apple was working on an “iTablet.” He also predicted it would arrive around the end of 2008.
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