Dr. Lundberg is Wrong on Medical Blogs

Dr. George Lundberg has posted a video editorial over at Medscape last week titled, "Is There a Place for Medical Blogs in a Medical Media Company?" His answer, unfortunately, is "no," and I disagree (no surprises there!).

I have the utmost respect for Dr. Lundberg, with whom I worked pretty closely while at Medscape. As a matter of fact, I helped develop the idea and format of these video editorials while I was there. But on this topic, I think he's wrong.

After a lengthy list of interactions from the past that he feels are similar to Medical Blogs today, Dr. Lundberg finishes with the following:

But since the blogger may be the author, editor, publisher, advertiser, critic, reviewer, and owner -- all at the same time -- and fake the whole thing, a trustworthy medical media company may embrace unfiltered blogging at its even greater peril.

Actually, I believe for all those reasons, it's important, compelling and maybe even vital that a leading medical media company embrace the medical blogging world. The key word in the sentence above has to be "unfiltered". Of course, any time a media company gets involved in anything, by the very nature of the terms, it's not going to be unfiltered.

But, the killer feature of the medical blog world is it's transparency. The trick for a medical media company such as WebMD (the parent company of Medscape) is to try not to be a filter, but to be the check against the "doomsday scenario" (faking it) that Dr. Lundberg describes. If WebMD and/or Medscape were to present the leading medical blogs -- unfiltered, but verified -- they would be exposing these compelling and vital writers to the much wider audience that they deserve.

Here's the task -- Bring the best medical bloggers to your unmatched audience, but don't get in the middle. Then you'll be doing a service to all parties.

Comments

[Denise]

"Don't get in the middle"... I totally agree.

[drumsnwhistles]

Couldn't agree with you more. Well said.

[enoch choi]

it just begs the relevance of medscape. Their thinking stinks of traditional MSM rationalisations. The web promotes the better medbloggers via linklove and doesn't need medscape. Verification is done by the community itself, by quotes back and forth between medbloggers, and eventually, by the readers. Let the reader beware.

[Ion Freeman]

Enoch,
Clearly, there's a validating role for a Medscape company to play. This will largely be in the selection of blogger; I used to really enjoy Slate's "The Medical Examiner" even though I had absolutely no faith in Slate's Editorial Staff's medical knowledge, simply because I felt that Microsoft (the owner at that time) would have picked physicians with a certain amount of credibility.
As a member of the general public, it's hard to tell one dermatological oncologist from another, so editors can provide that important function.
Mr. Hoffman brings up the point of verification, something MedScape could do, but Slate couldn't. Every doctor I have known socially has at least one wacky belief, so you'd want the posts verified by medical editors. However, passing blog posts through the verification process kills their immediacy, and detaches them from the news cycle.
So I'd suggest, and I'm just thinking while commenting on a blog post, that the posts go up as the carefully selected blogger finishes them, and then get a notation -- like a little staff of Asclepius icon -- that shows the post has been validated by the editorial staff.
This gives a very active role to the Medical Media company, while keeping the filtration down.
Ion

[jess]

There is a propostion to measure the value of blogs by Pro-Per Utility Test Score