On the shoddy journalism front, it's easy to totally trash the reporter or her editors, and while there's no doubt they could have done a lot better, the problems with the Star-Telegram are really endemic to the whole industry right now. All but a handful of large newspapers have eliminated the health care beat, even as hospitals have become the largest non-governmental employers in most major cities (especially in the Rust Belt where newsrooms are also struggling the most). There's no evil ulterior motive -- it's simply because the model to pay for that level of smart news coverage has collapsed. That's tragic because underfunded -- and as a consequence, bad -- journalism can still have an outsized influence on the public conversation about the big issues...like health care. It's something we're going to need to think about as things play out in Philadelphia in 2014.