FluPortal.org

Marketplace has reported on swine flu several times this autumn. (You can check out its recent coverage here, including today’s piece on workplace worries.)

Managing editor George Judson explained to me in an email that the Marketplace team is “tracking [H1N1] as a developing story.” This means they’re paying close attention but being selective:

It comes up fairly often in our daily news meetings, but so far we’re keeping a
fairly high threshold — is the day’s swine flu news really one of the top three or four business/economy stories of the day? Because of our business focus, we’re not so susceptible to scare stories, for lack of a better term. [...]


This selectivity can be a strength for us. A couple of weeks ago, for example, we passed on a White House report that said the pandemic would level some large proportion of the population. The next day the CDC furiously contested the report.

Marketplace is of course a national show with a specific focus — but the general principle of that high threshold makes sense even in the most local newsroom.

Are you reporting your first H1N1 story in your community and looking for places to start? Have you been at it for a while but need some fresh ideas? Try our new page devoted to state and local resources.

You’ll find a clickable U.S. map that leads you to information specific to your state. Also links to sites like the CDC’s state health-department list or HHS’s health-clinic locator. Even things like PSAs from your members of Congress.

The page also links to all of our bookmarked pieces — news items, government guidelines, etc. — relevant to states and local communities.

If you’re looking for background info on swine flu as well, our general resources page has all sorts of quick facts assembled from government and pubmedia sources.

Share your tips based on your experience of community reporting by contacting us here or commenting on this post.

Attention public media and public health professionals: The first FluPortal webinar will be on October 7, 2009. Details below.

Greetings from the FluPortal team.

You may have already heard about FluPortal.org. It’s a resource for you — stations and programs, editorial and online staff — to support and share efforts to cover the H1N1 flu pandemic.

View the site at http://www.fluportal.org.

We have already received much useful and supportive feedback. We welcome more. Please join us for a site tour and Q&A on:

Wednesday, October 7
11am PT / 2pm ET
**Click here to register for the FluPortal webinar**

About FluPortal

FluPortal.org is a central place for public media outlets to find key information and tools to support their on-air and online H1N1 flu coverage efforts. We want to help you make your site a destination for swine flu information in your community.

FluPortal.org is for:

• General managers
• News directors
• Program directors
• Editors
• Producers
• Reporters
• Web managers

Here you can find:

• News, public information, and data from government and non-goverment organizations
• Multimedia content, widgets, and technical how-tos for station and program Web sites
• Ideas for covering swine flu in your community, and examples of how other stations are doing so

The FluPortal blog highlights the latest H1N1 developments relevant to the public media system.

Questions? Ideas? Contact us.

This project is led by Public Radio Exchange in collaboration with NPR and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This evening, Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio will present Here and Now – Preparing for H1N1. The collaboration will be broadcast on WPT stations and simulcast on the WPR Ideas Network across the state. The special will feature interviews with public health officials and medical experts and answer audience questions on the H1N1 pandemic.

I spoke with Andy Moore, a Senior News Producer at WPT, and asked about the timing of the program. “For this special, we wanted to find the right point in the story to engage our audience. We needed to wait until there was a sufficient level of awareness, but also produce the program early enough in the flu season to contribute prevention and education.” On how the TV and radio teams came to work together Moore says, “Our organizations have collaborated on election coverage in the past, and that set a model for how we came to work together on this issue.”

In addition to the on-air discussion, during the program there will be a separate toll-free number staffed by a panel of health experts to take questions from the audience off-air. The goal is to answer as many questions as possible from concerned citizens – not just the ones that make it on-air during the broadcast. Moore says, “Many people may have questions about H1N1, but some don’t want to ask them on a live call-in show. We wanted to serve that audience while also producing a valuable on-air discussion.”

The hour-long special airs tonight at 7 pm Central Time. Live video will be streamed on the WPT website and audio will be available on the WPR live stream.

Should you say “H1N1″ or “swine flu” — or both — in your reporting?

Joe Neel, the health editor of NPR’s science desk, explained NPR’s policy in a recent email to the FluPortal team. NPR, he says, uses both terms interchangeably. When using “H1N1,” it “prefer[s] ‘new H1N1′ or ‘pandemic H1N1,’ at least on first reference.”

This is the reasoning:

–The virus is a new swine virus, so it is accurate to call it ”swine flu” or “new swine flu.”
 
–The virus is a new H1N1 virus, so it is also accurate to call it “H1N1″ or “the new H1N1 virus.” 
 
–We view “swine flu” as somewhat more precise scientifically than  ”H1N1.” There are at least 11,000 strains of animal flu viruses called H1N1, some of them swine, some human, some bird, etc. The top virologists in the world agree that this is a swine H1N1.  
 
–The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls it “2009 H1N1 (Swine Flu).”

Go ahead: it’s safe to BBQ
[ctaloi / CC (usable on your site) / Flickr]

The U.S. pork industry is unhappy about the “swine flu” moniker. For starters, H1N1 is made up of genetic material from swine and avian (bird) and human influenza viruses, and it hasn’t infected U.S. swine. So, it says, why blame the pigs? More importantly, the term “swine flu” has hurt hog prices, though you can’t get the flu by grilling up a nice chop or bacon.

Michelle O’Neill, news editor at WVIK in Illinois (Augustana Public Radio), just emailed us to explain that her station uses only “H1N1″ as a result of listener feedback:

We have received a number of calls from our listeners who are farmers, pork producers, and in the business community who object to the term “swine flu.” [...]

Unless reporters who refer to it as “swine flu” give explanations in every story that the strain is a combination of several types and not swine alone, the term is vague. I hope NPR will consider changing its policy for clarity and accuracy.

So it’s up to you. You can argue it both ways. FluPortal will follow NPR’s lead and use both terms.

[Update 21 October 2009: Swine flu has now appeared in US pigs. The Department of Agriculture says pork remains safe to eat.]

[Amit Gupta / CC (usable on your site) / Flickr]

Our near-Surgeon General — Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN — recently came down with H1N1. In a tent in Afghanistan while reporting on wartime healthcare. His camera man Scottie McWhinnie succumbed too. Gupta’s description of his symptoms is clear and possibly helpful to point to in your coverage:

It started as a cough. It wasn’t the kind of cough where something is temporarily stuck in your throat. It wasn’t the kind of cough where simply clearing your throat would’ve been adequate. This was the kind of cough that hurts when you do it. A stinging pain that makes you wince and guard and hope that you don’t have to cough again any time soon. [...] I was lightheaded and freezing cold – even though it was over 100 degrees outside at that early hour of the morning.

I was nauseated and my entire body hurt. [...]

I am not someone who gets sick, really ever. And this was the sickest I have ever been. [...] In case you are curious, there wasn’t much the doctors could really do for me. Some Tylenol and a sinus decongestant [...]. We also got IV fluids, given our inability to keep anything down. Within a couple days, I felt a lot better, and a few days after that – I was back to normal.

He signs off by noting that most people will have one big advantage: being cared for in the comfort of their own homes.

[Update 25 September 2009: Turns out NPR's April Fulton had already highlighted Gupta's account on NPR's Health Blog a day before we wrote about it.]

FluPortal.org launches officially today. Here’s our press release. Public radio and television stations and other public media entities: stay tuned for details about an early-October FluPortal webinar.

PUBLIC MEDIA LAUNCHES FLUPORTAL.ORG, AN H1N1 RESOURCE FOR PUBLIC MEDIA COVERAGE

September 22, 2009

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Public Radio Exchange (PRX) today announced the launch of FluPortal.org, a Web resource for public radio and television stations covering the H1N1 flu pandemic. The site will be promoted throughout the public broadcasting system.

Learn more at FluPortal.org.

PRX is partnering with NPR and coordinating with other public media sources to provide a selection of timely content, data, and resources to assist stations and community partners in presenting effective coverage and critical information to the public.

“The most important role public service media plays is being a source of trusted information,” said Pat Harrison, president and CEO of CPB. “FluPortal.org can assist stations in providing critical health information to their communities on air, online, and on the ground.”

U.S. health officials have declared the spread of H1N1 flu a public health emergency, and expect cases to rise dramatically this fall and winter. Federal, state, and local agencies are getting ready and urging the public be prepared as well. Public radio and television stations across the country can help health agencies communicate with their local communities by covering the pandemic’s many angles responsibly, thoroughly, and quickly.

“We are able to quickly assemble a remarkable range of resources from public media and beyond, applying PRX’s curatorial and technical expertise to help public media improve H1N1 preparedness and response,” said Jake Shapiro, CEO of PRX.

FluPortal.org is a central place for public media outlets to find key information and tools to support their on-air and online H1N1 flu coverage efforts. General managers, news directors, program directors, editors, producers, reporters, and Web managers can find:

• Local and national reports from across the public media system
• News, public information, and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, the World Health Organization, and other government and non-goverment organizations
• Multimedia content, widgets, and technical how-tos for station and program Web sites
• Examples of how stations and programs across the country are using the Web to communicate about H1N1 to their local audiences

The FluPortal blog highlights the latest H1N1 developments relevant to the public media system.

The FluPortal team is reaching out to a variety of public media and public health organizations to aggregate and curate exemplary coverage, news alerts, and other H1N1 information. The project is also using a suite of Web tools and applications to create custom modules that can deliver dynamic H1N1 information to local station Web sites. The goal is to support a coordinated public media approach to crisis response now and in the future.

This project is led by Public Radio Exchange in collaboration with NPR and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Learn more at FluPortal.org.

Contact:
Rekha Murthy
Public Radio Exchange
http://www.prx.org
617 576 5455
rekha at prx.org

Contact:
Louise Filkins
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
http://www.cpb.org
202 879 9759
lfilkins at cpb.org

Tomorrow HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will announce the winner of the Flu.gov PSA contest. The goal of the contest? To “tap into [the] nation’s creativity” to help prevent the spread of H1N1. Anyone over 14 was eligible to submit an entertaining 15- or 30- or 60-second video promoting flu prevention and the Flu.gov site. HHS judges picked their top-ten favorites, which where then submitted to a public vote on YouTube.

You can watch the 231 entries at the contest’s YouTube site. The ten finalists included a toothbrush prank, an H1N1 rap, and a guy in a yellow hazmat suit.

Be among the first to find out who won the $2500 prize by checking Flu.gov’s Twitter stream or Facebook page. The winning video will appear on national TV.

One of the top-ten videos [chrisappix / YouTube]

[Update 23 September 2009: As Rekha noted in her comment, the H1N1 rap took the prize. You can watch it and find the embedding code here. NPR's Health Blog reports on rapper Dr. Clarke's "health hop" habit here.]

[prashant_zi / CC (usable on your site) / Flickr]

On Tuesday, the FDA approved the H1N1 vaccine. You’ll find the press release here. NPR’s Health Blog (which is a good general resource for H1N1 news) reported on it. It followed up with a post on the debate about vaccinating pregnant women, pointing to an ATC piece on a relevant vaccine trial and also to the CDC’s vigorous recommendation that pregnant women should be vaccinated.

NPR has consolidated its H1N1 coverage with the launch of a special series, “Swine Flu: The Second Wave“.  The web page will collect H1N1 coverage from NPR news reports and blogs as we head into flu season. NPR has also added the Second Wave series to the API Query Generator. Any stations using the older World Health H1N1 API feed should change to the new series to receive updated Swine Flu coverage this fall. Additionally, stations (and audience members) can take advantage of  the series RSS feed. We’ve updated our Web Resources page and NPR API guide to reflect the new NPR series.