• Air Date & Time: Tuesday, February 20, 2007, 1 PM Eastern US time
  
• Duration: Approx. 30-45 minutes
  
• Go to the Pharma Marketing Talk Channel Page to listen live to the podcast on the Web with your browser. You will also be able to participate in an online chat with the host and speaker to ask questions!

  An audio archive is available after the show here. You may also click on a button below to listen to the streaming audio archive on your computer or to download the archived show for playback on your iPod or other portal audio player.

Background
The blogosphere is becoming crowded with new blogs focusing on the pharmaceutical industry. This is the first podcast in a series of interviews with bloggers in this space.

Recently, at least two "main stream" journalists started their own pharma-related blogs. In this podcast, John Mack's guest will be Jim Edwards, Senior Editor, Brandweek, and blogger at BrandweekNRX.

Most bloggers have welcomed the new entrants with open arms, except for Matthew Holt, at the The Healthcare Blog, whose welcome message to Jim was faint praise:

"Some of the best reporting on the pharma business in the last few years has come not from the mainstream press but from Jim Edwards, a reporter buried in the marketing industry trade press at Brandweek. Given the fact that certain Manhattan-based major press publications could use to improve their pharma and health care journalism (and I’m not talking about the WSJ, think more of dogs and sores [he means the NY Times]!), I was hoping and expecting to get an email one day from Jim telling me of his new gig. But instead, he’s decided to not only stay at BrandWeek but also to commit journalistic suicide and become one of us."

Maybe we can convince Matt to make a cameo appearance?

Jim Edwards

Jim Edwards is a senior editor at Brandweek where he covers pharmaceuticals. He is a past winner of the Neal Award for business journalism and the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists' award for investigative reporting, among others. His work has been published in The Nation, Campaign, The American Lawyer, Salon, Metro New York, and MTV News.

Some questions to be addressed in this podcast include:

• What prompted you to become a blogger? What can/can't you do as a blogger that you can't/can do as a jourmalist?
• BrandweekNRX is obviously a project of the publication you work for. How does it help the brand? What kinds of restraints are you working under?
• Do you think Matt Holt's "journalistic suicide" comment has merit? Will journalists change blogging or will blogging change journalists?

Additional Resources

• Journalistic Suicide or Blog Assimilation?