Reporter's extra effort is a home run.

Reporter Karen Kaplan does an exceptional job researching the topic of pollutants found in chicken eggs and presenting rarely covered angles in her recent Los Angeles Times article.

Kaplan includes an important bit of information: a lack of potential conflict-of-interest for the researchers. This note about who funds the research and where any conflict-of-interest may lie is now common practice in research articles, but rarely so in the press. In this case, the information is crucial to understanding the importance of the findings.

The article is about pollutants found in free-range chicken eggs. The health effects of the pollutants are clearly mentioned and a reference dose from the World Health Organization is even included. Implications beyond Taiwan – the country where the research was conducted – are mentioned, including the "how and where" of the pollutants' origins.

In an industry monopolized by "industrial" egg production using caged hens, research demonstrating that free-range eggs are contaminated beyond levels of caged eggs could be suspect. If the research group were funded by industry sources – rather than publicly funding from the National Science Council of Taiwan and the Taiwanese Ministry of Education – other researchers and the public would want to more carefully examine the findings. Including the funding source in the report allows readers to focus on the science.

This well-done article provides a template for other reporters to follow.