I was at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. yesterday to accept a Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism for the creation of the HealthNewsReview.org website. It was a terrific event, hosted by the J-Lab, The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland.

The news release about the event is available online.

About our efforts, the judges said: "Strong methodology, great content, and a great service for reporters and the public."

It was motivating and encouraging to see the inspiring work of so many creative journalists who, true to the mission of the awards, use "new information ideas and technologies to involve citizens in public issues."

The New York Observer reports that Dr. Jonathan LaPook, recently named medical reporter for the CBS Evening News (with Katie Couric), also helped arrange Katie's on-air colonoscopy in 2000. The Observer also reports:

"Over his quarter-century in medicine, he has consulted with some of that network’s most important figures: former news division president Howard Stringer; Andrew Lack, the creator of the newsmagazine West 57th and a former senior executive producer of CBS Reports....His father-in-law is Norman Lear, the television legend and creator of CBS hits All in the Family and Maude.

In August, Dr. LaPook officially joined the payroll. Still a practicing physician and a member of the faculty at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, he is now also the medical correspondent for Ms. Couric’s CBS Evening News. That evening-news job was previously held by Elizabeth Kaledin, a practicing journalist who has covered the medical beat for the network since 1996.

Ms. Kaledin was still under contract when Dr. LaPook replaced her, and the contract will not be renewed when it expires at the end of this year, according to three network sources. ...

Dr. LaPook declined an interview request because he was “seeing patients and crashing a story,��? said a CBS News spokesperson. Ms. Kaledin declined to speak at length because of the sensitivity of her position at the network.

“The thing I’d feel most comfortable saying, which is the truth, is that I am heartbroken by the loss of my job and have spent 20 years working to get to this point, only to be replaced by someone with no journalistic experience only because he’s a doctor,��? she said. “I have worked incredibly hard from the smallest markets in TV to get to this point. I have never pissed anybody off. My reporting career is unblemished. I’m well-liked. I work hard. I’ve been loyal to CBS.��?

All maybe true, Elizabeth, but you didn't help arrange the famous colonoscopy and you're not a "popular Upper West Side gastroenterologist." You were only, apparently, a journalist.

A Dutch epidemiologist and colleagues warn in the BMJ this week that news coverage of a diabetes finding may raise unrealistic expectations. They write that a New York Times story earlier this year quoted a diabetes researcher saying the gene discovery (a variant of the TCF7L2 or transcription factor 7-like 2 gene) could lead to a diagnostic test to identify people who carry the variant gene.

They say that a Scottish scientist headed the research team, which led the Glasgow Herald to report, "Discovery of holy grail will help scientists treat diabetes."

The editorial acknowledges that the discovery is undeniably noteworthy. But the claim that this discovery will lead to a diagnostic test - and the chance to prevent type 2 diabetes - may not be true and may mislead the public.

“Raising unrealistic expectations – even inadvertently – could distract attention from what can be done by applying what we already know to prevent diabetes and its complications," they conclude.

What a flashback! 21 years ago, National Cancer Institute researcher Steven Rosenberg became a media darling because of his work with Interleukin-2 against cancer. Magazine covers, newspaper headlines, Today show appearances. Much of it hype.

Yesterday a new media feeding frenzy was kicked off when the journal Science published a Rosenberg (et al) paper about remissions in two people with advanced melanoma using genetically altered white blood cells from the patients themselves. The 15 other people in the trial died.

The Knight Science Journalism Tracker website comments on the variation in the way journalists covered the story:

"Gene therapy has failed so many times to live up the hype of a generation ago (much of it abetted by journalists) that good reporters are usually cautious in writing about it. So it was that some who covered this put the experiment’s limitations ahead of its achievements. The Baltimore Sun’s Michael Stroh, for example, wrote a lede that started: “In a small study…� Lauran Neergaard of the AP went with a more upbeat lede: “Government scientists turned regular blood cells into tumor attackers that wiped out all signs of cancer in two men with advanced melanoma,� but followed with a second graf that started “But� and said the treatment failed in 15 others.

A sampling: The Washington Post’s David Brown was careful to note that none of the scientists would claim the two patients were cured, a verdict that would have to wait at least five years; however, Karen Kaplan, writing in the Los Angeles times, called the treatment a “cure.� Sabin Russell in the San Francisco Chronicle appropriately called the study “tiny�; Joe Palca had a good backgrounder-cum-news story on NPR Thursday afternoon; The Telegraph’s Roger Highfield in the UK was unusually upbeat, spinning a heartwarming anecdote of one patient in whom the treatment worked through nine paragraphs before telling his readers that the treatment failed in 15 others."