I’m joining MedCity News
Three months after my ill-fated decision to take a job with Clinical Innovation + Technology (I never did get an explanation or even a returned call from that cowardly boss, but it probably was about money), I am taking another plunge. Starting next week, I will be a staff writer, covering health IT for MedCity News, just in time for the HIMSS conference the following week.
How do I know it will be different and that I won’t be cut loose after less than three weeks? MedCity has new ownership as of January, namely New York-based Breaking Media. (The press release is still up at the top of the home page.) Breaking Media, which operates online publications in a half-dozen industries other than healthcare, seems committed to growing MedCity, and won’t run out of money, as CI+T’s publisher apparently is; three other reporters were let go a few days before I was cut loose.
You may have noticed that I’ve been contributing commentary to MedCity once a week for the last month or so. That has been on a freelance basis, as is the piece that should appear over the weekend. I’m still winding down some other freelance work, so I won’t be able to dive right in and write a lot for MedCity starting Monday, but I should be cranking out a lot of stories by the time HIMSS rolls around.
And now I know what I’ll be doing during HIMSS, it’s time to get back to all the publicists I’ve shooed away for a month and piece my schedule together. I’ll have to have time to cover some of the pre-conference, keynote and educational sessions and then write about three stories a day, so I won’t be scheduling a whole lot of vendor meetings, but I’ll see what I can do. As I’ve said for a long time, I can either meet with a lot of companies at HIMSS or I could get my actual work done.
I’m excited about this new chapter and I’m ready for the challenge of covering my 14th consecutive HIMSS conference. Best of all, I can sleep in my own bed this time.
Excellent! Glad to hear it and MedCity News is lucky to have you. I’ve really liked the work they’ve done in the past. Looks like an exciting opportunity.
Good luck going through the pitches. It took me 7 hours (with a break for dinner) to get through all mine. See you in Chicago!
Good luck Neil – it’s hard to sort the health tech wheat from the chaff w/o regular reports from you from the front
Congratulations! I’ve long respected MedCityNews and they also have solid financial backing which is so important in this time when we see apparently solid news sources like Gigaom suddenly shutter.
All the best and I’ll be looking for your articles and observations!
Donna
Congratulations Neil! Maybe I’ll see you next week.
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