This is the official announcement to public radio and public television organizations explaining the end of the FluPortal project.

March 25, 2010 — The FluPortal project comes to an end on March 31. Thousands of public radio and television stations, public media outlets, community information groups, and bloggers have made use of the editorial and technological resources on FluPortal.org since the site’s launch in early September 2009.

Please read our final report, “Crisis Coverage by Public Media: A Review of FluPortal and Recommendations for the Future.” We’re posting report highlights on our blog over the next several days.

The National Center for Media Engagement (NCME) has agreed to continue hosting FluPortal.org as an archive site. They will not be adding new material, but will keep the site live to allow public media and public health professionals to reflect on our response to this major public health crisis.

We encourage you to make further use of timeless materials such as the technical guides, editorial resources, and select blog posts, including:

• Was H1N1 Info Communicated Well to the Public?
• Building an H1N1 Web Page with Limited Resources
• Make Your Station a Facebook Power User
• How WBUR’s Sacha Pfeiffer Reports on H1N1
• Crisis Response in Haiti
• Can Health Reporting Weather the Economic Storm

We thank many of you for your ideas and contributions to the project, which we hope has laid the groundwork for collaborative public media responses to future crises. A special thanks to project partner NPR for their efforts, including an embeddable, interactive map of the pandemic, a widget displaying swine flu coverage by stations across the country, and editorial insights.

Best,

The FluPortal team

Rekha Murthy, Josh Andrews, Katherine Bidwell, Ken Mills

About the Project

FluPortal is an online resource for public media organizations covering the H1N1 pandemic. The FluPortal team aggregates and curates exemplary coverage, news alerts, and other information from public media and public health organizations. The project has also assembled a suite of web tools to help station websites become major sources of H1N1 information in their communities. 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.

On March 31, the FluPortal project comes to an end. We’re happy to say this is well after the H1N1 flu pandemic has itself waned in the United States. Given this fortunate turn of events, we took the site into new directions beyond pandemic flu, exploring how public radio and public television stations can cover a range of emergency situations where public information is critical.

Our report, “Crisis Coverage by Public Media: A Review of FluPortal and Recommendations for the Future,” gives in-depth perspective on the technological, editorial, and communications aspects of the project.

FluPortal.org, the website, will remain accessible indefinitely. Public Radio Exchange (PRX), which has led the project with support from partner NPR and funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, will migrate the site to the servers of the National Center for Media Engagement. We’ll stop blogging and adding new material, but we hope public media and public health professionals, as well as the general public, continue to refer to FluPortal for information and ideas on covering flu pandemics and crises in general. Given the nature of technology, our website tool guides won’t be timeless, but they’re cutting edge so they should last for a while.

I’d like to thank our team — Josh Andrews, Katherine Bidwell, and Ken Mills — for their efforts in breaking new ground for public media. I’d also like to thank NPR — particularly Joe Neel, Keith Jenkins, Javaun Moradi, and Robert Benincasa — for their work as well. And a huge thank you to the hundreds of people at stations, media organizations, universities, and health/science organizations who presented at our webinars and contributed content, crosslinks, and insights.

We hope FluPortal represents a step forward in public media’s ongoing efforts to collaborate and share knowledge. We also hope that this will be sustained and built upon by future efforts. It’s in that spirit that we wrote the report, and we welcome your thoughts.

Rekha Murthy
FluPortal project manager
Public Radio Exchange (PRX)

FluPortal.org, a CPB-funded portal for H1N1 information, is hosting a webinar on

Thursday, January 28
11am PT / 2pm ET
Click here to register

Please join us for the latest H1N1 developments and best practices regarding health crisis coverage by public media, both on-air and online.

Public media stations and programs, community information groups, and bloggers have all made use of FluPortal’s resources and tools. The site is paving the way for future public media responses to crises, both health-related and otherwise. Our blog is a great way to stay informed, with coverage ideas, web tools, and guest features from public media and public health professionals.

Thursday’s presenters:

+ Josh Andrews, FluPortal team: What’s new on FluPortal.org

+ Joe Neel, NPR Health Editor: An update on swine flu in the US and upcoming NPR coverage plans

+ Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio Healthcare Correspondent: A look at local and regional coverage of the pandemic

+ Andrew Wilson, Flu.gov former New Media Strategist: Using social media to get health crisis information to the public

+ Your questions and comments

The webinar is free of charge. Anyone working in public media, public health, or community outreach is invited to attend.

FluPortal is led by PRX in collaboration with NPR.

Questions? Ideas? Contact us.

As winter approaches, the H1N1 flu virus still has a strong presence across the United States. FluPortal is here to help public media cover the pandemic’s many angles. We have more resources than ever for newsrooms and web departments.

Please visit FluPortal.org regularly, and subscribe to our blog for updates on the latest site features, public media coverage, and ideas from across the system. Some highlights:

+ Interactive Flu Map. NPR has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to design an interactive U.S. map of flu-like illness. Public media outlets are invited to embed this map on their websites. NPR updates the map each week with the latest CDC data, and those changes automatically appear in the embedded version. Get the map at FluPortal.org.

+ Get Started Guides. Public radio and public television websites can be H1N1 destinations for their communities. We’ve created guides to free web tools for all levels of technical expertise. Get a web page up fast with the “Quick” guide. Go a little further with the “Easy” guide. The “Go Big” guide is for advanced technology managers. For examples of other stations’ flu-related websites, see our Public Media Coverage page.

+ Using Facebook. We regularly post new guides in our For Station Websites section. The latest: ways to use Facebook to keep your community informed, find new sources, and enhance your own websites. Learn more.

+ FluPortal Blog. Get the latest developments and reporting from public media, government, and non-government groups, as well as ideas and sources for covering H1N1. Contributors include Flu.gov’s head of social media, APM’s Public Insight Network, PRI’s The World, a street artist in Brazil, and several public radio and television stations. Read the blog.

+ Contact Us. Have a question about FluPortal? Need help implementing a web tool or finding editorial information? Want to write a guest blog post, or have your station’s coverage featured on the site? Let us know.

As the swine flu evolves, so does FluPortal. Check back regularly for new information, and subscribe to our blog. We’ll be holding another webinar in January, and we’ll keep you posted.

Learn more about the project on our About page.

Regards,

The FluPortal Team: Rekha Murthy, Josh Andrews, Katherine Bidwell, Ken Mills

As we’ve noted before, pandemics are by nature a worldwide issue. But once they hit home, it’s no small challenge to track what’s happening in the rest of the world in ways that won’t confuse or distance an already-saturated audience.

David Baron is Health & Science Editor for PRI’s The World. He says that when H1N1 first emerged last spring, the need for a global perspective was clear: people wanted to know how and where the virus might spread, and how bad it would be. Now that the virus is widespread in the United States, attention has turned to domestic issues such as school closings, vaccine availability, and government preparedness at all levels.

The H1N1 pandemic remains a very important story for The World, which covers global events and how they affect the U.S. The question they face now is: “How do we keep it a World story?” David and his team are constantly seeking global angles that connect with the needs and interests of their American listeners.

Those of us who assume the inherent importance of global coverage might be surprised to learn of its complexities. Take this report by Gerry Hadden that aired a few weeks ago.

“H1N1 Flu Shot Ambivalence in Europe” by Gerry Hadden (transcript)

[audio:http://www.fluportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/TheWorld-FluShotAmbivalenceInEurope.mp3]

David explains:

We saw a news item in which many Germans said that if they were offered a vaccine for H1N1, they would not get it. We wanted to know why Germans are so opposed, while Americans are so in favor. I assumed the story Gerry would get is that the average German is not that aware of how important the vaccine is, or that they don’t trust the German government. I assumed that doctors would be on board, but that wasn’t exactly the case. Even the German medical establishment was wary of the vaccine and was discouraging people from getting it unless they were in a high-risk group. The message from German doctors was much more negative than the message from doctors in the U.S.

I struggled with how to put this on the air in a way that wouldn’t confuse people and wouldn’t undermine the public health message here. But at the same time, I don’t want to censor anybody. If this is what German doctors are saying, of course we should let them say it on our program.

Ultimately, David chose to start the segment with an interview with an official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to remind American listeners of the U.S. government’s message, before “confusing” them with the contrasting view from Germany. He then followed Gerry Hadden’s piece with an interview with a British social scientist about different cultural attitudes to the H1N1 vaccine.

“Cultural Attitudes About Swine Flu Vaccine” by Marco Werman (transcript)

[audio:http://www.fluportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/TheWorld-CulturalAttitudesAboutSwineFluVaccine.mp3]

As David surveys the globe for more swine flu stories, he wants to avoid simply assembling “a collection of facts,” of just telling listeners what’s happening in different countries. Rather, he’s going for the “why.”

Why does one country react in one way, and another country react in a totally different way? That, in some ways, is the most interesting story.

And that’s what led to this World report last week about panic in the Ukraine stoked by a mixture of politics, media, and culture.

“Ukraine Takes Drastic Measures Against Swine Flu” by Brigid McCarthy (transcript)

[audio:http://www.fluportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/TheWorld-UkraineTakesDrasticMeasuresAgainstSwineFlu.mp3]

We asked David for his advice to local public media stations when it comes to covering swine flu worldwide.

Honestly, what’s happening in the rest of the world is not what the majority of Americans care about most. But they will care if and when the virus mutates and becomes more dangerous or more lethal, or if it develops resistance to existing drugs or the vaccine.

Newsrooms across the United States should be keeping an eye overseas, tracking the progress of H1N1 and other viruses, in order to anticipate coverage needs at home. And, with so many waiting in the wings, David says, “We’ll all have to get used to covering these stories again and again.”

Note: The World has several podcasts to help you track their coverage. Much of their swine flu coverage makes it into The World Science Podcast.

Recently WDET General Manager J. Mikel Ellcessor got in touch to tell us how the Detroit Public Radio station used FluPortal for their H1N1 community information site.

We’ve incorporated the different RSS feeds provided through fluportal.org into a central feed and are linking to the CDC and flu.gov sites. For a little local flavor, we also consulted with the public health professionals at Wayne State University (our licensee) on some free, downloadable flu prevention posters. We did one for adults (for workplace lunchrooms, etc…) and one for kids (daycare centers,etc….)

Why is WDET addressing the H1N1 outbreak in this way? I invited Mikel to tell us in his own words.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Intention (public health awareness and community engagement, not journalism)
This microsite is part of a wider public information strategy. Said another way, it’s about community health awareness and civic engagement, not journalism. This microsite provides a clear pathway to information for people so they can absorb vital public health information in a self-directed manner.

The underlying question is: How do we percolate the best information down many layers? It’s estimated that as much as 25% of the people in Detroit may not have health insurance. We’re focusing on both this targeted subset of the community and the wider population through our broadcast and online activities.

We just launched the site so we don’t have any traffic data. The site will be promoted on-air and through the Wayne State University public information system. We will reach out to 350 neighborhood-, block-level-, and faith-based organizations through a community network called Arise Detroit!

We’re pursuing an approach that is in line with advice we’ve gotten from the public health community, who have stressed the importance of getting proactive information to people before the incident rates start to rise. Once the case number starts to climb, we know the media will go into overload. This is what we saw in the first wave of H1N1.

Flu-prevention poster [WDET]

The public health authorities are encouraging us to move people through an awareness-raising process in a proactive way. The theory is that this can increase adoption of best prevention practices and it can keep the alarm down.

We’re in a unique position because our licensee, Wayne State University, is the largest single campus medical school in the country. It has a leading position in pandemic research and pandemic communications, so we’ve been able to tap their expertise as we developed this public information strategy.

The strategy has several different elements beyond the site. For example, we collaborated with our WSU colleagues to produce separate 8.5 x 11 H1N1 prevention posters for adults and children. The intention is for people to grab these and post them in work break rooms, day care centers, church fellowship halls and cry rooms, etc…

We’re partnering with WSU, the City of Detroit, and New Michigan Media, the ethnic media consortium, to present a targeted H1N1 briefing at the WSU School of Medicine. The target list is the same as the Arise Detroit! community, plus ethnic media and the volunteer door knockers the City has recruited for their grassroots campaign.

Radio is the original social medium. We’re using our power as a convener to bring people who have influence and authenticity in THEIR community together, give them the right information, and get them out.

Site design and functionality
The site is designed for people with low-capacity connections. The functionality is deliberately lean and the design factors in the likely user overload that comes from too much jargon and stepping into a fearful unknown. This gives the user a very low exposure entry point to flu information.

The main element is the blended RSS feed. We merged materials from fluportal.org and then added the downloadable posters that the user can download and share.

–J. Mikel Ellcessor
General Manager
WDET-FM

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.

The Department of Health and Human Services, having recorded several PSAs and with several more to come, enlisted the help of the very public it’s trying to educate. The 2009 Flu Prevention PSA Contest had 240 submissions. A panel of public health and media experts selected 10 finalists, and now the public gets to vote on their favorite.

You and your listeners can vote, too, until September 16. Vote here.

The winner gets $2500 and airtime on a number of media outlets. Maybe public media outlets, too.

This one didn’t make it to the finals. But it deserves some appreciation.