By Michael Miner
In the publishing trade, a good piece of the conventional wisdom about the AM News is that each week gallant journalists put out a magazine so scrupulous that AMA executives despised it. AM News reporters have not been known to discourage this vision of their labors, and I’ve heard enough testimony over the years to suppose that it’s largely true. Lundberg speaks on the subject with imposing authority but no semblance of disinterest. He edited the sister publication, the Journal of the American Medical Association, until he was fired early last year after publishing a survey on sexual attitudes just as President Clinton was being impeached. During his last four years at JAMA, Lundberg also had ultimate editorial responsibility for AM News. He was often at war with his bosses.
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Said Physician’s Weekly, “Gone will be all political and policy news. In its place will be more on practice management and clinical medicine.” Such a change presumably would delight the folks Lundberg calls “the politicians,” the ones who’d prefer an AM News that’s a docile house organ. As Physician’s Weekly put it: “Resisting pressure to serve as an AMA propaganda tool, the paper evenhandedly reported the debacle that followed the AMA’s product-endorsement deal with Sunbeam and other controversies.”
Lundberg applauds this heritage. “It’s generally believed in the United States that people like to be able to trust what they read. Many readers of AM News want to hear about AMA actions and the AMA positions on things, but it reports those very well, clearly labeled.”
Though it appears she’ll soon be producing a magazine fewer doctors love to hate, she expects the potshots to go on forever. “I believe that bullet will be fired over and over and over. Because the medical world is full of controversy, to write about it accurately and helpfully requires that you write about the controversy. And it’s never been possible in my experience to write about controversial topics without drawing some of the heat to the publication.”
In this bright new age, readership surveys suggest that the editorial independence long asserted by AM News is more important to its staff than to its readers. As one staffer told me, you can’t respect the work you do unless you’re willing to bite the hand that feeds you. That’s the “Greek classical dilemma…the aching urge to write about the parent entity. That means you’re real.”
Zimbabwean newspapers began reporting last summer that legal action was being considered. “We do not keep axes on our aircraft. For what purpose?” Mwenga protested to the Zimbabwe Standard. “We never fly aircraft without the full complement of cockpit or cabin crew.” He went on to say that the distance between Kariba and Hwange is so short that the automatic pilot is never employed–the implication being that even the most distressed airman can hold it until he lands.
