📰 Spotlight on Jonah Comstock, Editor-in-Chief, pharmaphorum

Background

-Name: Jonah Comstock

-Home Base: Hopkinton, Massachusetts (45 minutes outside of Boston); works in the Eversana parent company office in Boston one day per week.

-Role: Jonah joined pharmaphorum in 2022 as editor-in-chief and is the only U.S.-based pharmaphorum team member.

-Expertise: Jonah has over a decade of experience in health tech and digital health journalism. He became MobiHealthNews’ first employee in 2012 where he cut his teeth in healthcare reporting. Following Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) acquisition of Mobi, and through a series of promotions, Jonah grew to oversee all HIMSS media as their top editor. He moved to pharmaphorum a couple of years ago because he was “interested in going somewhere where I could … try to build something up.” Jonah says it’s been a journey evolving from focusing predominantly on digital health to becoming conversant in pharma policy and the science.

Beat Overview

-Publication: Based in London. pharmaphorum was founded in 2009. It was acquired by an EU-based marketing group a decade later and as of last year, now operates under the Eversana umbrella. Eversana is a large U.S.-based life sciences consultancy. Since its launch, pharmaphorum has remained an editorially independent publication. pharmaphorum serves a global audience, with a heavy focus on U.S. news, given Jonah’s location, and European coverage spearheaded by colleagues based abroad. According to its website, which attracts 147,000 unique users each month, “pharmaphorum’s mission has always been to educate, inform, engage, and connect pharmaceutical industry leaders and to equip them to thrive in healthcare’s evolving digital future.”

-Coverage Areas: Jonah’s focus includes a wide range of pharma industry topics, including cell and gene therapy, clinical trial innovation (decentralized trials, diversity), and U.S. pharma legislation and policy (IRA updates, pricing debates).

–Angles of Interest: The original idea behind pharmaphorum and its namesake is that “it wasn’t just supposed to be journalists writing for pharma,” likening the aspirational model to feature more contributed content from industry insiders. Jonah adds that that’s still a focus, as his team accepts thought-leadership op-eds from industry insiders on both the site and the Deep Dive. In addition, nowadays, “we cover pharma pretty broadly. A lot of our competitors specialize in R&D, commercial, etc. … Our lens is we’re writing for the pharma audience, and we’re trying to deliver them content that helps them do their job better,” says Jonah. pharmaphorum has six core coverage areas: Digital, Market Access, Oncology, Patients, R&D, and Sales & Marketing.

Pitching Tips

-Timing Matters: Because the team is in London, Jonah typically works earlier hours, 7 a.m.-3 p.m. ET, sometimes later, and adjusts based on conference schedules when he’s on the ground covering an event. He prefers pitches sent during the early part of his workday.

–Know Who on the Team to Pitch:

• Eloise McLennan, Deep Dive Editor-Leads pharmaphorum’s Deep Dives. 2025 ed cal isn’t out yet, but the 2024 ed cal is still available (focusing on Patients & Partnerships in October and Digital Health in November).
• Nicole Raleigh, Web Editor-Covers all EU stories outside of Daily News and publishes a clinical trials roundup of readouts and M&A.
• Phil Taylor, News Editor-Manages Daily News (short articles published on pharmaphorum’s website), especially related to late-stage clinical trial readouts and funding announcements, and also publishes a funding roundup.
• Jonah-Point person for U.S.-based pitches, and additionally publishes a monthly hires roundup called “Changing Faces.”

-Collaborative Reporting Trips: Jonah’s team is small, with a correspondingly small budget. So, he’s open to company-funded reporting trips, but he has “very specific rules when we do that… There’s no quid pro quo … You’re not paying for any particular coverage. … We’re only going to do it if there’s news value to it, and we’re careful to always disclose the financial relationship.” Jonah cites his reporting trip to Copenhagen visiting Novo Nordisk last year as an example of this approach, with several columns like this one resulting. *T2B idea for community consideration: If there are several agencies or companies in a hub outside of Boston that have compelling story angles for Jonah, you could consider coordinating and pooling funds to bring Jonah out for a series of briefings.

-Reinventing “News & Analysis” and “Deep Dive” Sections: Jonah’s team is working toward incorporating more news and analysis throughout the site instead of having it always live separately. For the Deep Dives, they are aiming for a “curated reading experience” and intend to retain the magazine character for longer reads around a specific topic, like oncology. For these, “the earlier, the better,” and Jonah recommends pitching one to two months in advance. He also notes that the Deep Dives offer a mix of sponsored, contributed, and editorial content.

–Opportunity for Op-Eds: Jonah accepts op-ed pitches, but advises to consider if your piece would be more appropriate as sponsored or contributed content, as all contributed content must be “editorial valuable” and not promotional. The best op-eds are from respected thought leaders with something interesting and original to say about the industry. Note that pharmaphorum requires all content to be exclusive to its publication.

–In-Person Video Interviews: Jonah is interested in filming informal, live videos at company offices/labs. Especially in Boston, he says he can easily bring his tripod to your office. Videos don’t necessarily have to be news-driven and can be company profiles. He also often films video at events.

-Podcast Option: If an in-person video isn’t practical, the pharmaphorum podcast is recorded remotely and looks to feature high-profile voices with something new to say about major stories of the day.

-Embargoes and Exclusives: pharmaphorum accepts embargoed news, and Jonah encourages pitches for exclusives, as he’d like to do more of those.

Pet Peeves

-Pitching Without Doing Your Homework: Jonah gets frustrated when PR pitches aren’t relevant to his beat. “I get an insane volume of pitches, and it’s frustrating when they don’t align with what I actually cover.” pharmaphorum doesn’t cover medtech, and despite his background in digital health, not all digital health stories are right for pharmaphorum. However, they do still cover digital therapeutics and pharma app plays.

-Repeated Pitches for the Same Story: While persistence is appreciated, Jonah doesn’t want to receive repeated pitches for the same story if he hasn’t responded. Take a non-response or “no” at face value; it means to stop pitching that topic but not to stop pitching altogether.

–Lack of News Value: With so many inbound pitches, Jonah advises PR pros to avoid sending news for Phase 1 or 2 readouts “unless there’s really extraordinary data.” He says that he’s more likely to cover late-stage clinical developments, instead. And for fundings, he’ll cover bigger rounds or financings with “really exciting names attached.” If you pitch smaller fundings or trials, they’re likely to end up in a roundup rather than as a full story.

-Avoid One-Offs and Instead, Tie to Broader Trends: For feature pitches, he’s “more likely to be interested in a bigger trend piece that the company that you’re pitching exemplifies.”

-Sources That Don’t Have a Clear POV: Jonah says he “likes getting pitched source offers on people who can speak authoritatively on things.” He’s also open to background interviews.

Events and Conferences

-U.S. Conference Coverage: Jonah covers JPM (or at least the events around it) and attends ASCO and BIO in person. He additionally goes to other topic-specific conferences if they’re in the Boston area; for example, he recently attended the CAR-TCR Summit and the LSX World Congress.

-Other U.S. Key Events: Jonah attends several key events hosted by trade publications and industry conference organizers, including STAT and Informa summits, as well as Reuters Pharma and the FT US Pharma and Biotech Summit.

-EU Conference Coverage: His team covers conferences in Europe. Nicole attended ESMO, for example, and the team often goes to smaller events hosted by publications like the Economist and WIRED. Jonah notes that, because Nicole is based on London, she’ll often attend events taking place there, similarly to how he frequents events held in Boston.

-pharmaphorum’s Frontiers Health: pharmaphorum hosts their own annual conference called Frontiers Health in Europe, and Jonah says it’s “all hands on deck.” This year’s conference coming up next month in Berlin “will bring together hundreds of professionals, experts, and enthusiasts to discuss the potential of digital evolution in health and care.”

Key Quote

“Our North Star is how can we help people in pharma do their job better, either with actionable content or helping them understand a different part of the business. … We write in a way that usually errs on the side of accessible. We want to demonstrate our understanding of the space, but we’re not trying to be super inside-baseball in how we present information, and the reason for that is because … we are writing for all sides of the business, and we want all of our content to be accessible to all of them.”

Lightning Round

-One Thing That Most People Don’t Know About pharmaphorum: There’s only four of us on staff.

-What You Want pharmaphorum to Be Known for, in One Word: Connecting.

-You Wish PR People Would Do Less of ___: Pitching without doing your homework.

-The Best PR Folks ___: Focus on relationship-building.

-Scenarios When It’s OK to Call or Text You: Rarely, unless we have an established relationship or we’re on the ground at an event.

-Favorite Topic You’ve Covered: Stories that intersect across science, technology, and policy.

-Single Biggest Challenge You See for Our Industry: Optics and connecting with the public.

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