STAT hires Chakradhar to write Morning Rounds newsletter

STAT News executive editor Rick Berke sent out the following announcement to the staff:

Everyone:

Sept. 28, 2015, is an important date in the history of STAT. Early on that Monday, more than a month before our site itself had launched, 2,131 people woke up to Megan’s smiling (blue-tinted) mug and this cheerful greeting:

Good morning and welcome to the new Stat newsletter, Morning Rounds! Give me two minutes and I’ll get you ahead of the day’s health news.

Thus, the debut of our flagship newsletter. Among the items: President Obama (remember him?) and HIV.  A costly new drug from Roche. And an “Inside STAT” promotion to Sharon’s piece on tiny devices known as “electroceuticals.”

As we all know, Morning Rounds is as much an institution as anything at STAT. For its now-70,000 subscribers, it is the front door to our enterprise every morning. There is nothing like it in health and science journalism. In our survey of readers late last year, we asked for suggested tweaks, and the most common response was, “Don’t change a thing!”

Megan’s discerning eye, dedication, and work ethic have made Morning Rounds a resounding success. Besides producing the newsletter for more than three years, Megan has managed to come up with ahead-of-the-curve enterprise pieces on subjects including college mental health and a new twist on the ketamine phenomenon. She even elicited a tweet from The Rock when she and Drew wrote about his CRISPR movie.

Now, we’re unleashing Megan full-time to turn her formidable reporting chops on an assortment of news, features, and enterprise targets.

That raises the big question: Who could fill Megan’s shoes?

Happily, we have an exciting answer: Shraddha Chakradhar will be our new Morning Rounds writer.

Shraddha comes to us with nearly six years of experience as a reporter and editor, most recently as the associate news editor of the biomedical research journal Nature Medicine. She has effectively been the journal’s only staff reporter, covering everything from bench science discoveries to clinical trials to health care policy. She has also been the driving force behind building up the publication’s social media presence.

Before joining Nature Medicine, Shraddha worked at NOVA and other science documentary production companies as a researcher. She worked with a small production company in Boston to help produce videos that were featured at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for the 10-year anniversary of the Human Genome Project’s completion. She is also active in organizations including NASW.

Shraddha, who lives in Watertown, was one of Karen Weintraub‘s students at BU many years ago, and Karen has been singing her praises ever since. She impressed us with her depth of knowledge, her range of experience, and her reputation as a delight to work with. She also understands the import of continuing to build the MR franchise while putting her own stamp on what we’ve created.

I want to thank Sarah, Megan, and Gideon for conducting the rigorous search — including asking prospects to submit live Morning Rounds samples — that left us with very impressive finalists.

Shraddha will join us at HQ on Feb. 19 and will take over the column after a transition period with Megan.

Please congratulate Shraddha and Megan on their new adventures.