Tracking the Merck/Schering-Plough coverage

Dean Rotbart of NewsBios spent Monday live blogging about the coverage that Merck’s pending acquisition of Schering-Plough.

Here are some excerpts:

• You won’t find any streaming video on the Merck-Schering combination at WSJ.com, unlike January 26th when Pfizer agreed to buy Wyeth.  Why not?  Could it be because last month the Journal laid off long-time pharmaceutical reporter and editor, Scott Hensley, who did the video duties in January?  Hensley also oversaw the site’s Health Blog and helped supervise reporters Jacob Goldstein and Sarah Rubenstein.Health.NewsBios has tried to get the Journal’s PR department or John Carreyrou, Health & Science editor for the paper, to tell us who will now oversee Health Blog.  But no one has responded to our inquiries.  It always strikes us as ironic that journalists such as Carreyrou, who admonish companies to be more open to press queries, go hiding when they themselves are approached by a reporter working on a story.  We’ll bet Carreyrou & Company are missing Hensley’s talents and experience today!

• Out of curiosity and to make sure we are not missing any important coverage, we clicked on over to the homepage of Investor’s Business Daily to see what that paper has to say about the Merck deal.  The answer: nothing.  At 4:48 p.m. EDT, the word “Merck” appears nowhere on the paper’s main page.

Read more here.