If you don’t know Chuck, you should seek him out at the next Becker‘s event. He was lured to Crain‘s by Rance Crain himself to take over the then money-losing Modern Healthcare. Chuck turned the book around, making it the leading weekly publication in the industry; he stayed for 25 years before retiring. A few years later, he got a call from Scott Becker, our publisher, asking to meet one day. Scott hired Chuck on as a consultant to Becker’s, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with Chuck every month or so since. Chuck has provided extremely helpful guidance to me over the years, but one lesson especially stuck with me.
When Chuck and I were out to lunch one afternoon, he grilled me about my views on certain polarizing healthcare issues — “death panels” and other reactions to health reform legislation. Like a good journalist, I responded by presenting both side of the argument. Chuck is far too polite to ever say such a thing, but it was fairly clear: My responses were boring. “Have an opinion,” he told me, adding that because of my knowledge of the industry, people are interested in my opinions. “They are?” I thought.
Maybe so.
So I started sharing them when asked. I accepted more invitations to speak on and moderate panels, sharing my thoughts openly and freely.
Eventually, our team decided we needed a dedicated forum to share our opinions, insights and inferences on the issues we cover. Hence, this blog you are reading now.
When we launched the Daily Beat, in August 2013, my goal was to give our editors a place where we could share more personal thoughts with readers — offering a bit of commentary on a site that traditionally only offered unbiased reporting. Our publisher, Scott Becker, and president, Jessica Cole, were kind enough to approve my pet project, although none of us expected it’d attract significant readership.
Today, the blog draws as many readers as our most popular channels, and some posts have rivaled that of our editorial-intensive national lists.
The popularity of the blog, I think, is a direct result of the incredible intelligence, insight and wit of the multiple editors who contribute to it. I know I leave it in capable hands.
And while I’ll no longer be posting to it, I know I’ll be reading.
