MedCity Goes After Medical Hubs; Focus on News, City Guide

Some cities have unique professional communities that make them a company town with its own media. Washington D.C., of course, is a government town, well served by Bonneville’s WFED-AM. Similarly Huntsville, Alabama, is a space town; Los Angeles is a movie town; New York is a finance town. Each has its own media.

The medical community, of course, has lots of company towns that are centers of research, investment and specialization. Tapping into that is MedCity Media, which is headquartered in Cleveland (i.e., The Cleveland Clinic).

Among its products are MedCityNews, a local, business-oriented medical news/citizens journalism feed that is available for syndication by local media, and MedCity Life, a local city guide that “targets business travelers, the local medical industry and anyone who wants to be around the medical industry, including potential employees and future medical students.”

The company has set up local sites in a number of medical hubs, including Cleveland, Research Triangle Park, the Twin Cities, Ann Arbor, Boston, Chicago, Madison and Pittsburgh. It is being advised by interactive news pioneer Merrill Brown, among others.

Local medical news is correctly driven by the medical business — there isn’t much that is local about local medical health beyond allergies. But the city guide especially intrigues us. Each city guide has an editor who researches the local venues, events and culture. MedCity Life’s basic concept is that “stakeholders know the business reputation of our medical cities, (but) they are less informed on the work-play-life aspects of these markets.

“They don’t know which bars and events naturally attract their peers,” notes the collateral. “That’s why Akron’s Doc’s Who Rock event is in there; and why we mention one of Minnesota’s main med-tech eateries, The Good Day Cafe; and why we pay tribute to Leonard Medical School in Raleigh, the first black medical school in the Deep South.”