story of the week

welcome to a new feature on amanda in the city. every week i am going to discuss my most read or favorite story that i wrote this week.

actually, if you want to read my stuff and you don't have a subscription to the newswire where i work, you can google my name and the name of my company and come up with a bunch of my articles that are posted on law firm's websites. they pay a certain amount for the rights and post them on their sites when the stories involve one of their clients or if an attorney from their firm is quoted.

anyway, this week i did work on a series based on my trip to toronto and the lawfirms we met there. i wrote about the competition groups from five different firms, one a day for five days. i don't know if i need to explain this to you, but vanity pieces, or as we call them "people stories," are pretty formulaic and soul-sucking. i blame the toronto snapshots for my crappy mood this week.

however, my most read story this week was actually a people story. my piece about one firm's growing intellectual property group got over 850 hits tuesday.

i took it kind of easy this week, because of the canadian articles, so i didn't write any really juicy stories. one story i wrote yesterday about the new york attorney general's probe into student loan companies' shady practices (short version: they are evil) was the lead story on one of the wires today, but got less than 100 hits. i also wrote a lot about suffering subprime lender new century, which might declare bankruptcy soon. but that is boring.

the story with the most hits this week besides the people story racked up just under 200, which isn't that fantastic. the one with the least hits? a lonely 1 for an energy story i wrote yesterday.

my favorite story that i wrote this week involved a group of doctors in california that sued blue cross over reimbursements. basically, insurance companies are evil (like student loan companies) and like to keep as much money as they can for themselves and not reimburse hard working doctors.

i spoke the attorney who filed the suit while he was on vacation in hawaii and he gave me this awesome quote.

“If you’re not in the Blue Cross network and 50% to 60% of the people in your community are covered by Blue Cross through their employer or otherwise, you might as well become a shoemaker.”

when i speak to someone who's that fun, and i feel like i'm writing about things that really matter in the world, that's when i really enjoy my job.