Let me belatedly post the main story I have been at work on for the last six months or so, as part of a Reporting on Health fellowship, about obesity — and those battling it — in Santa Paula.
Turns out, appropriately, it's students and young adults who have taken up the fight. Not to mention of course doctors, educators, health care agencies, and countless others I didn't have a chance to quote.
I confess to liking my lede, for rhetorical reasons:
Americans today are an exceptional people: We are the heaviest in the world. Now the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that as we supersize ourselves we are skyrocketing our risk of developing diabetes.
Especially at risk are children in Ventura County.
For more, please see Mission Healthy.
People — including the funders, who want it numerically — ask for some measure of impact. Wonder if I've heard much of a reaction. Well, a number of friends have told me that they thought it was good, they liked it, even that it actually had something of a happy ending, but that's all I've heard.
Well, that's enough. "Respect of my peers," as they say in sports.
Note: a smart and faithful reader writes in to remind me that my math skills have gone to hell in the last forty years. So I'm going to keep my "metric" simple: compliments must outweigh reasonable complaints about errors re: any given story by 10-to-1 for it to be any good. This means — practically speaking — a story can't be good unless it is essentially error-less.
That's a high standard, and that's why editors and time are required for good journalism.
(Er, not that anybody asked…)
Kit Stolz 
They need more physical activity as they are staying longer on their laptops and phones.
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