FluPortal.org

Two links caught our attention this week that could be of interest to stations covering H1N1. While these examples are not directly related to swine flu, they may inspire you to try new approaches in your coverage.  

WNYC’s audience submitted economic indicators

The first is Crowdsourcing: A Field Guide from WNYC. Crowdsourcing entails soliciting your audience to help collect, curate, and vet information around a specific topic or issue. WNYC has been experimenting with crowdsourcing for the last few years, most notably on the Brian Lehrer Show (recently, the program asked the audience to contribute examples of the recession’s impact for their Uncommon Economic Indicators project). The guide provides case studies on how to implement crowdsourcing at your station, along with tips on where it fits in your existing editorial process and standards. There’s a useful 10 point quick-guide that rounds up the big takeaways from the field guide.

While the recent snowstorms in the Washington DC area don’t reach the crisis threshold, it’s fair to say they had a major impact on the region. The Washington Post is using the Ushahidi platform (which we mentioned in our round-up of responses to the earthquake in Haiti) to map the impact of the storm. The map provides an online tool that allows the audience to highlight locations still buried from the storm — impassable streets and sidewalks, cars buried, and power outages. But they also encourage folks to map opportunities to help in the dig out — snow blowers available or a shovel to share.

Getting to know emerging tools and techniques during more routine scenarios will allow public media outlets to respond more effectively when and if a crisis hits.

[Flu.gov on Facebook]

Andrew Wilson was until recently Flu.gov’s new-media strategist. Several months ago, we described how he used social media to revamp the Flu.gov site when H1N1 hit and also to get information out to the public more efficiently. Now you can hear Wilson outline the process himself — and its effectiveness — in more detail in a final excerpt from FluPortal’s latest webinar. (Previous excerpts here, here, and here.)

Wilson explained that the online interest in H1N1 last spring was so significant (equal to or greater than current interest in Haiti) that it “posed lots of challenges [...] from a communications perspective.” It meant that Flu.gov had to reinvent itself and its outreach in the middle of the crisis.

Enter social media. Wilson used it to evaluate who was coming to the site and why. (Learn how he did it here.)

Armed with this information, Flu.gov redesigned its site, collaborated with other organizations working on flu, and improved its public outreach using social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flu.gov’s blog. The social-media outreach, Wilson said, has been key for two reasons: it increased Flu.gov’s responsiveness to news; and it made the information “as shareable as possible.” The end result: more information to more niche audiences more quickly.

Wilson also used social media to continue improving Flu.gov. At one point, for example, he noticed chatter on Twitter about a Canadian H1N1 vaccine recall. He was then able to explain on Flu.gov — and back on its Twitter channel — that the recall didn’t affect the U.S.

Here’s Wilson’s presentation — complete with helpful and interesting slides:

[FluPortal]

The full webinar is available here.

Last week, in our webinar on crisis reporting, FluPortal’s tech whiz Josh Andrews outlined some of the newest resources available on this site.

He highlighted our revamped “Reporter & Program Resources” page, where among other things you’ll find our curated list of the best H1N1 news articles; he laid out the new guides to web tools and social media available on our “For Station Websites” page; and he emphasized that we continue to offer H1N1 story angles regularly on our blog.

The new web tools Josh outlined include the Public Media H1N1 Widget. It automatically displays the latest H1N1 reporting from public media, and you can easily customize its size and appearance so that it fits the look of your website.

Josh also explained that you can use many of the tools available on FluPortal in other crisis reporting — or to enhance your coverage of any subject. Learn more in this clip from the webinar:

[FluPortal]

You can watch the full webinar here.

FluPortal and NPR have teamed up to produce a new widget that aggregates public media H1N1 coverage. The widget provides local perspectives on the swine flu pandemic from public media outlets across the country. Stations (and the public) are welcome to embed this widget on their websites and blogs.

The widget is powered by Daylife, a content syndication and curation service, which is used for the topics.npr.org section of the NPR website. For this widget, Daylife scrapes content feeds from public media outlets and auto-updates the widget to display the latest stories related to the H1N1 pandemic.

There are a number of configurable display and style settings in the new widget. Learn more about the new public media H1N1 widget and get the embed code. The FluPortal team will be happy to assist configuring the widget to meet the needs of your station website — just contact us if you would like some help.

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.

In yesterday’s CDC press briefing, Ann Schuchat, Director of CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, gave a post-holiday roundup of the latest H1N1 developments.

Here’s the short course: The vaccine is now available to pretty much everyone who wants it all across the country. So far, the US hasn’t decided to return/donate/sell any of its vaccine supply as some European countries are doing. Instead, it’s focusing on the upcoming (10-16 January) National Influenza Vaccine Week (NIVW). NIVW is another big push to encourage Americans to get H1N1 and seasonal-flu shots. It has its own schedule of activities, informational materials, a media toolkit, and web tools like ecards and badges.

Why continue pushing the H1N1 vaccine when, as Schuchat announced, “we’re seeing drops in laboratory confirmed hospitalizations and deaths”? Because there’s also “activity increasing in a few other indicators.” She clarified:

We still have more activity than we usually have this time of year, though it’s certainly much below where it was several weeks ago. All the virus that we’re seeing right now is the H1N1 virus. We haven’t yet seen the emergence of seasonal flu strains in any numbers at all. We saw a slight uptick in the last week’s reporting in the influenza-like illness visits to the doctors or emergency departments. That can sometimes happen right around Christmas, so we don’t know if that will persist. We also saw an uptick in pneumonia or influenza deaths in this past week. And that isn’t something that we necessarily see around the Christmas holiday.

Minnesota was one state that reported increased influenza-like illness last week.

What CDC is afraid of, of course, is a third wave of H1N1. To drive the point home, Schuchat showed this graph of pandemic mortality in 1957:

[CDC / usable on your site]

She went on to say:

This is really a reminder of why we are saying that we need to remain vigilant. [...] [I]f you look at this graph, the bottom part of that curve, you know, the — there’s the camel hump and then it comes down to that valley. Well, that’s where we are right now in that valley. We don’t know what’s going to happen over the next several weeks or months. But in 1957, this essentially gave the all clear whistle in that December/January time period. They had vaccine, but they didn’t encourage its use and yet they did go on to see that increase in mortality.

National Influenza Vaccine Week launches on Sunday. You can check here for NIVW activities in your area.

Stations looking to add interactive features to their website should consider giving CoveritLive a try. CoveritLive is a “live blogging” platform that can be used to host real-time conversations between stations and their online audiences. We’ve just added a new guide to using CoveritLive to our roster of web tools.

In recent years, there has been much discussion about how public media can better incorporate audiences into the content it creates. There are examples of audience assisted journalism, crowd sourcing of information and ideas, and harnessing user-generated content. All valuable, but often overlooked is the simple act of providing regular online forums where users can interact in real-time with each other and with station personnel. CoveritLive offers an online approach to audience participation that mirrors the broadcast call-in show.

I do want to note that CoveritLive is one of many tools that allow online publishers to interact with their audience in real time. But in researching the available options and talking with stations that use CoveritLive, it became clear that it is the best fit for most public media outlets at this time. You can expect more innovation and new services to emerge in this space, and I would like to point out two others to keep an eye on.

Google Wave – Google Wave is still in limited beta release, but many media outlets are experimenting with using this new communication and collaboration platform. The Red Eye, a free Chicago daily paper (owned by the Chicago Tribune) has begun to use Google Wave for daily live chats with its audience. After a few successful trials, they now conduct a 30 minute public wave each weekday, usually around the topic of that day’s cover story.

Disqus – Another service to watch is Disqus, a commenting platform you can integrate into your station website. It offers real time updates to comment threads and has the ability to connect related conversations from various pages on your site that may otherwise live in isolation of one another. A service like Disqus has the most potential for stations websites that have an active commenting user base.

If you have any questions about getting started with CoveritLive (or the other tools mentioned), feel free to contact the FluPortal team. We will be happy to lend a hand.

[Richelle Antczak McCuen]

Richelle Antczak McCuen wears at least three hats at WCBE in Columbus, OH. She’s the membership director, a substitute local music host, and the webkeeper. As webkeeper, it fell to her to put together the station’s H1N1 page. Here’s how she did it in two days flat, while still taking calls for her other jobs at ‘CBE.

Richelle told me that her GM, “always on the lookout for cool opportunites for the station,” suggested that a swine-flu page could engage and serve the station’s community. He pointed her to FluPortal as a guide.

Before starting in on any of the technical stuff, Richelle decided she “had to know what was important to the user… not just what would fit in the page layout.” To figure that out, she asked herself what she, as a new mom, would want to see on the page. She decided to provide basic H1N1 information, links to more in-depth resources, and good local tips and hotlines. She recognized, too, that self-updating widgets would keep the page from looking static — and that people like to learn things through social-media channels (like Twitter) that “aren’t 100% educational and are enjoyable to use.” Richelle said that this process of sifting through the options was “really a huge portion” of the two-day project.

Next she built the page. Richelle says she’s “not a web designer — in no way a master.” She considers herself “more of a maintenance person” who knows basic html and javascript but no complicated CSS. This, she said, was enough to let her create her page using the simpler tips from FluPortal. She felt she was able to match the “level of sophistication that people expect” from WCBE’s site. She was also able to give the page the feeling of change and momentum she was looking for (by using news widgets).

As a final check, Richelle ran her H1N1 page by WCBE’s news team “because they’re on the front lines of the story.” The newsroom gave its content a thumbs-up.

If you too are at a small station with limited resources, but you’d like to build an H1N1 page, check out our get-started guides. Richelle felt they “gave [her] the tools” she needed.

Facebook is the most popular social network in the United States, and according to a recent survey, nearly half of pubic media audiences are using the service. Many stations have already created Facebook profiles and are connecting with their fans on the site. Facebook also offers a set of tools that makes it possible to integrate social networking features directly on your station’s website.

FluPortal has published a guide to using Facebook in your H1N1 coverage. Facebook can enhance your H1N1 reporting and online capabilities in numerous ways, from helping you crowdsource story ideas to facilitating online discussions about the pandemic. And placing your content within Facebook’s social stream can dramatically expand the reach of your H1N1 coverage.

During crisis situations, Facebook can be a vital link to your audience to communicate critical, time-sensitive information. Social media is most effective during crises when organizations have an established and active presence on websites like Facebook. The online relationships you build today will pay off when you need them most.

Whether you’re just getting started with Facebook, or looking to expand your station’s use of the service, FluPortal’s guide to using Facebook can help you assess the tools and options available.

American Public Media’s Public Insight Network is leading a pubmedia charge into collaborative journalism. It taps into the wisdom of 70,000+ volunteer sources by letting them share expertise and news tips. We invited Joellen Easton, a public insight analyst for APM, to explain the Network’s usefulness for H1N1 coverage.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

A story like H1N1 can be tricky for journalists. Sound the alarm too loudly and panic sets in. Give the issue too little attention and people don’t take the threat as seriously as they should. Even health officials are struggling with how much information is too much information. For newsrooms, that balance comes from accuracy, context, explanatory reporting, and smart sourcing. We need to know what’s happening in the schools, the workplace, and at home. We need to hear what people are experiencing and how they’re coping. And to make sure our coverage reflects the reality on the ground, we can engage our audience editorially: it’s community engagement for your station with newsroom impact.

At American Public Media and other public media newsrooms that use Public Insight Journalism, journalists are gathering insight into H1N1 community impact from listeners and readers, and incorporating new ideas and new sources suggested by the audience into reporting.

MPR News asked its Public Insight Network and listeners:

• A general query: What questions do you have about H1N1? The questions people shared with the MPR newsroom influenced the content of an H1N1 FAQ page.
• To workers: What do you know about flu-related absenteeism and other workplace concerns? A hardware store owner provided insight into the world and worries of small business in this Web commentary.
• To health care pros: Will you get a flu shot? MPR News had sources in hand for a story about health care workers planning on skipping the flu shot.
• To pharmacists: How are you coping with demand? A pharmacist shared how he is making his own Tamiflu at his pharmacy to meet demand, and MPR’s Lorna Benson broke the story.

Public insight has become a part of how the newsroom chases and tells the H1N1 story, and how it prospects for new story leads. We always ask targeted questions, but leave the door open for news tips and related leads.

One of APM’s partners, the St. Louis Beacon, asked its readers “How are you getting ready for a major flu outbreak?”, collected responses, and then reported a fresh angle on the swine flu story. Other partner newsrooms at Colorado Public Radio, SCPR, and NHPR are also collecting insight and creating H1N1 source lists.

Public Insight Journalism’s particular method of partnering with the audience involves a database of 77,000 volunteer sources, on-air and online promos, email, web questionnaires, and social media outreach, as well as dedicated journalists who comb through responses, distill insights, identify sources, and work with reporters and editors to use that insight in coverage. You can learn more about PIJ here.

Meantime, you can create a mini version of PIJ using free online survey tools. I like Google Forms because it doesn’t scream “marketing,” you can customize it, and it integrates smoothly into Google Docs for exporting responses, maintaining source lists, etc. Every form you create will have a unique link, which you can email, post on your Web site, tweet, post to your station’s Facebook fan page, and call out to on the air. (You can find tutorials for Google Docs and Google Forms online.)

However you editorially engage your community, the important thing is to listen to what people are telling you, and use their insights to guide your reporting. If you do, your stories should be richer, deeper, and more relevant.

Joellen Easton is a public insight analyst in American Public Media’s Public Insight Journalism division, where she adds mojo to Marketplace’s reporting by engaging the Public Insight Network. She also works with news directors and public insight analysts at eight public media partner organizations around the county to help them integrate public insight into their reporting.