UO Magazine > Practice in the Media

Practicing in the Public Eye

It’s not the glamour job you may think, and you probably won’t get rich, but physicians who work in the media agree that if you have the passion, it’s a great career.

By jon van zile
Unique Opportunities

Nov/Dec 2007

Pamela Peeke, the chief medical correspondent for nutrition and fitness for the Discovery Health cable network, made an unusual career choice a few years ago: She moved into a full-time media position.

When she did this, Peeke, MD, MPH joined a small group of high-profile physicians who serve as trusted advisers, teachers, and frequently authors, and who live in a rarified world of high public exposure.

“We are a self-selected group,” Peeke says. “People who get jobs in media are inquisitive, are always learning, and are willing to be very flexible with a crazy schedule.”

Peeke and other “media docs” have been—and in many cases, still are—practicing clinical physicians and scientists. But somewhere their career paths took a turn and they ended up in front of a camera or behind a word processor. In fact, media exposure and even working for a news outlet may be good for a doctor’s career. It can raise your profile and give you additional streams of income. In some rare cases, a media job can be lucrative enough that you can transition completely out of clinical medicine if that’s what you want.

But as Peeke and other physicians will tell you, it’s clear there is more to working in the media than showing up in the morning, reading a script, and collecting a Katie Couric-sized paycheck.

Physicians who are interested in having a public role have to learn the ground rules of journalism, consider demands on their own time, think about possible litigation issues, and navigate the delicate balance between income earned working in the media and income lost from time in the clinic or lab.

Then, of course, there’s that “it” factor.

“There’s something to be said for you either have it or you don’t,” Peeke says. “You’ve got to look at your credentials and ask who else are you competing against? There’s credibility to think about. And uniqueness. Do you have a little character?”

A door-opening scandal

Peeke’s transition from laboratory scientist to media celebrity began the way of so many career changes: with a phone call.

At the time, she was working as a senior research scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland, studying metabolism and nutrition issues. Before that, Peeke had spent eight years in emergency medicine and earned degrees in public health and public policy.

While she was still at the NIH, the phen/fen diet pill scandal broke. Suddenly, there was a tremendous need for credible experts to help news programs untangle the science behind the scandal.

“I was already working in a field that was incredibly hot when phen/fen hit,” Peeke says. “All heck broke out with this and they needed an expert. Next thing I knew, CNN sent a reporter to my lab.”

It was right then that her new career was born.

“You’re either comfortable on camera or not,” Peeke says. “They put a camera in front of my face and I had three minutes. For whatever reason, I had a blast.”

From there, Peeke “became pals” with the media. Suddenly, she was on the radar screen as an expert who was willing—and more than capable—to give good interviews. And, according to her, it “didn’t hurt” that she was a woman. Her early days working with CNN led to guest appearances on “Oprah,” the “Today Show” and “The View.”

Then, in 2002, she joined Discovery Health as the chief medical correspondent. Today, she is deeply involved in Discovery Health’s National Body Challenge, an eight-week fitness and weight-loss challenge sponsored every year by the network. She also speaks at events, writes for radio and print outlets associated with Discovery Health, authors books for the network, and represents Discovery Health as a keynote speaker and panelist at different events.

She even continues to see patients on a “very limited” basis and writes her own books.

“I love to teach,” she says. “I’m a teacher, and this allows me the opportunity to teach. But a lot of physicians see the glamour, and they have no idea how much work this is. It’s a lot of work.”

The time question

Peeke’s schedule is definitely high impact, but working in the media doesn’t necessarily have to consume your professional life. Physicians can also write for newspapers and magazines, review content for Web sites such as iVillage, or even do radio programs. Ultimately, the question is going to come down to this: How much can you make doing this versus how much you give up in income in your practice? Perhaps more importantly, how much time are you willing to give to this second facet of your career?

Paul Donohue, MD, the author of the widely syndicated “To Your Good Health” column, also backed his way into a media job—and eventually found that writing a column took up so much time, he could no longer see patients.

Donohue, a specialist in infectious disease, had no intention of becoming a newspaper columnist, but in the late 1970s, he frequently helped the former author of the “To Your Good Health” column answer questions about infectious diseases. The column itself had been a regular syndicated feature since the 1950s.

“The previous author was located in the same area,” Donohue says. “He had an editor who knew me, so when they had an infectious disease question, they called me. Then he died suddenly and they looked in the files and my name popped up.”

Donohue took over the column in 1980, and for the next decade continued to see patients while also writing the column. By 1990, however, the workload was becoming too heavy.

“I stopped my practice around then, or at least I cut it back,” he says.

Today, Donohue describes his work as a “nice, pleasant” job. “It takes a lot of time,” he says. “It’s not hard work, but looking up all the answers takes a long time.”

Donohue gets a few thousand letters every month, each posing a health-related question. He picks a few to answer every day, researches the answer and then writes a short column. His column is syndicated through King Features and appears in about 150 newspapers around the country. He receives a percentage of the income the column generates through subscriptions by individual newspapers.

While Donohue’s job is full time, Kerry Prewitt restricts his media work to an hour or so on Saturday mornings. Prewitt is part of a busy cardiology practice at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Towson, Maryland. On the side, he is a reviewer of on-line patient guides for iVillage’s cardiology health center.

“There was a guy who did work for Guidant Corporation, and I worked with them on a couple projects,” Prewitt says. “He put me in touch with the Web site, and they started sending me articles to review. It seemed relatively easy and it supplemented the income.”

As a content reviewer, Prewitt reviews patient guides that cover a wide variety of heart-health issues. The pay isn’t much—about $50 to review a short update or $150 to review a new guide—but it doesn’t take much time either. Prewitt estimates that it takes about 20 minutes to read a guide, and he does about three a week. Overall, he estimates that it comes to an hourly rate of about $150 to $300 an hour, which is fairly standard for reviewing physicians.

“I get up Saturday, get a pot of coffee, and crank it out,” he says.

In fact, Prewitt doesn’t even keep the income generated from his reviewing. He donates it to the foundation run by his cardiology group. “It’s a small way to contribute to a charitable cause,” he says.

Taking cover

Is there any risk involved with media exposure? This is a question doctors must ask themselves before they establish relationships with media. In today’s highly litigious environment, even simple medical advice can potentially open a physician to malpractice lawsuits. This threat is greater for higher-visibility physicians, if only because there is the perception they have more money or rich corporations backing them up.

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