FluPortal.org

As the H1N1 pandemic emerged in the spring of 2009, many media organizations — both commercial and non-profit — were facing immense financial pressures. “Unpopular Science,” an article that appeared in The Nation last summer, argues that the economic crisis of journalism threatens the quantity and quality of science and health coverage.

It’s no secret the newspaper industry is hemorrhaging staff writers and slashing coverage as its business model collapses in the face of declining readership and advertising revenues. But less recognized is how this trend is killing off a breed of journalistic specialists that we need now more than ever–science writers…who are uniquely trained for the most difficult stories, those with a complex technical component that are nevertheless critical to politics and society… [E]ven in places where you’d expect it to hold out the longest, science journalism is declining.

Does this argument extend to public media? Public radio and television have long prided themselves on providing science and health reporting that contains substance – not the gee-whiz info-tainment reporting that pervades commercial media. But public media has not been immune to the economic downturn. National producers and local stations alike have been forced to cut staff and reduce spending. But is this hurting our science and health coverage?

Bill Hammack is a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois and a frequent public radio contributor – both at his local station WILL in Urbana, and to national programs like Marketplace. Hammack agrees that fewer dollars to go around has the potential to lessen science and health coverage. “I see the Nation article as pretty accurate. It’s a case of hard numbers. There’s often only one science reporter at any news organization. If that position gets cut – there goes your science coverage.”

But Hammack doesn’t see it happening yet, and thinks public media science and health reporting will weather the economic storm. He points to the continued commitment from NPR to an active and robust science desk as well as audience demand for — and interest in — scientific news and ideas. It’s much harder to cut programming the audience values. “Public radio and television audiences value reflection and analysis. They desire context. That’s exactly why science reporting by public broadcasters is so strong when compared to commercial media.”

Connie Walker, the General Manager at WUNC in Chapel Hill, is also cautiously optimistic for public media science and health reporting. Walker mentioned that loyal listener support during the recession is a public media positive that commercial media can’t share in. “Corporate underwriting is down here, but our listeners have really showed great support during our pledge drives.”

WUNC has a full time health reporter on staff and, until recently, the position was funded by a foundation grant. When the economy went south, the funding was pulled and the station had a decision to make. WUNC kept the health reporter position and folded the cost into their general operating budget.

Walker says, “We maintained the science coverage because we feel it is a valuable part of our service and something our listeners have come to expect.” WUNC’s listening area includes a number of universities in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina. “We not only have an audience that is interested in science, but also local stories to cover.”

Although the station has been able to maintain its science coverage, it hasn’t been easy. Due to general budgetary pressures, the station has deferred filling a number of open positions and had to trim overall spending. Walker says, “We’re more fortunate than most, but the staff is feeling it. We’re asking them to do more with less.”

Have you noticed any decrease in the quality or quantity of public media science and health coverage? Does it remain a part of your station’s local coverage?  Let us know in the comments.

Food aid distribution in Haiti (David Schaper/NPR)

As a reporter for NPR, David Schaper has done his fair share of crisis coverage. He was in Mississippi during Katrina, covered Midwest floods, and reported from towns leveled by tornados. But nothing prepared him for the scenes he witnessed during two weeks in Haiti. I spoke to Schaper earlier this week about his experiences reporting on the earthquake recovery efforts and what lessons can be gleaned for public media crisis planning.

Based out of NPR’s Chicago bureau, Schaper was part of a second wave of reporters, arriving in Haiti two weeks after the earthquake struck to relieve staff that had been in place since the first days. He had been following the news from Haiti, but had not expected to cover the story. With just a few days to get ready for the assignment, Schaper did his best to prepare himself — emotionally and professionally — for the conditions in and around the Haitian capital. “I knew I would be faced with immense human suffering, but you have to be able to separate what’s sad and what’s really a story for the news.”

Schaper hit the ground running and was filing news spots from Haiti the day of his arrival. The challenge of getting his work done in a disaster zone was made easier by the NPR production and operations staff.  “The reporters and producers who were there before me and ops staff back in Washington did a fantastic job in dealing with the complex logistics that made the NPR coverage possible.” A makeshift production office had been set up in hotel that had suffered minor quake damage. Schaper described it as “the best you could expect under the difficult circumstances.” The NPR team had shelter, power (with intermittent interruptions), and fairly reliable internet connectivity via satellite phones.

Haiti is a poor nation to begin with and Schaper pointed to the difficulty of discerning which of the conditions he witnessed were a direct result of the earthquake and which ones were merely the local standard. Schaper informed me that Port-au-Prince is one of the largest cities in the world without a sewer system, and sanitation issues that arose after the quake have to be traced further back than January 12^th.

Schaper says his time in Haiti reinforced his belief that public broadcasters can be a lifeline for local communities during crisis situations and he urges local stations to review their emergency response plans. “What public radio does best — provide depth and context to a story — becomes even more important during a crisis.” Schaper urges reporters to remember that emergencies often mean dealing with the unexpected and less-than-ideal conditions. “Who are your emergency contacts in local and state governments? What are your contingency plans if the power goes out or the transmitter goes down? That kind of preparation creates opportunities to make a difference during a crisis.”

You can listen to David Schaper’s reports from Haiti on the NPR website.

WILL (TV and radio) in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, worked closely with local public-health authorities on its H1N1 coverage. It found that this was a very effective way to get the word out during a health crisis. Jack Brighton, who heads up WILL’s new media, explained to me recently how the cooperation evolved.

Back in the spring, Brighton told me, Champaign-Urbana’s healthcare providers and public-health officials began meeting regularly about H1N1. WILL decided to join in and sent staff from TV, radio, and new media to “become part of that conversation.”

One result was a series of PSAs that aired on WILL TV and radio and were featured on WILL’s H1N1 page.

Another outcome was the H1N1 page itself, which, based on anecdotal feedback, was helpful to WILL’s audience. It became the second project on a site called WILL Connect. This site is separate from WILL’s main website, and Brighton explained that it’s “envisioned as a community engagement portal.” It’s a place to do projects, he said, “in partnership with other public-service entities.” (The other WILL Connect project is on the economy.)

Brighton said that the cooperative H1N1 project was a “good model” in a couple of ways. First, it was “really effective in developing relationships with community partners — and in their seeing our value in getting the word out.” Second, working with WILL’s staff helped the other project members spread information more effectively through their own channels. 

Brighton says he “can’t overstate the importance of the relationships built in the process” of the H1N1 collaboration. He feels it set WILL up to “be more effective with other [public-health] projects down the line.” In assessing WILL’s work on H1N1, Brighton is also figuring out possible improvements. WILL’s H1N1 page, for example, didn’t display WILL’s own reporting on the story — something Brighton plans to remedy on future similar Will Connect pages.

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Minnesota Public Radio was able, during the height of H1N1’s second wave, to devote one reporter full-time to the story. In FluPortal’s recent webinar, that reporter — Lorna Benson — described how her station has approached swine-flu coverage — and what she’s learned from it. (This is the third excerpt from the webinar; first is here and second is here.)

Benson explained that before H1N1 appeared last April, she happened to attend a weeklong CDC workshop for journalists that included a section on pandemic flu. Once H1N1 struck, she found “that experience was very helpful.” It had introduced her to CDC flu experts, and she had a “good understanding” of how state and federal officials would work together during a flu pandemic (on medical testing, school closings, etc.).

During the summer H1N1 lull, anticipating a bigger outbreak in the autumn, MPR “took some time to sort through [its] pandemic coverage plan.” Benson also attended another CDC briefing — this time focused entirely on pandemic flu. And then a similar Minnesota Department of Health briefing. As a result, she was up-to-date on virus and vaccine details that helped her enormously when H1N1 resurged.

Among other things, Benson used the briefings to create an online swine-flu Q&A — which became one of MPR’s most-viewed web features. It received, Benson said, three to four times more hits than most. One lesson she drew from this and from audience questions during online H1N1 chats: there was a huge appetite for very basic H1N1 information.

Swine flu also taught Benson to stretch herself as a local reporter. She began listening to the CDC’s flu-update conference calls — which was, she said, “the first time that I had done something like that.” Prior to H1N1, she had thought these government calls were mainly for national media, but she learned that they included lots of information relevant to local H1N1 stories. As swine flu has tapered off in the last month or so, Benson has started reporting even farther afield: calling flu experts around the world to investigate the possibility of a third wave of H1N1. In other words: she found that national and international elements were indispensable for the best local reporting on pandemic flu.

To hear more about Benson’s experience reporting on H1N1, click on the “play” button below:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[FluPortal]

You can also find links to much of Benson’s H1N1 reporting here. MPR’s H1N1 page is here.

Watch the entire webinar here.

Joe Neel [NPR]

In FluPortal’s latest webinar, NPR Health Editor Joe Neel pulled back the curtain on NPR’s health & science desk to reveal how it has reported on H1N1 — and how it plans to continue in the months ahead. Using social media, he said, has been a lynchpin. There are interesting lessons here for all health/science reporters.

Neel summarized the current global H1N1 situation by showing the graphs and data sources that NPR relies on for its information. He then explained why NPR was ready to cover H1N1 when it emerged in April 2009: the network had been reporting on pandemic flu since the H5N1 bird flu of 2004 and therefore had “amassed a lot of reportorial experience in this area.”

The other significant element that has allowed NPR to cover the story in depth: social media. Specifically, Shots (NPR’s health blog) and Richard Knox’s Twitter stream. Neel explained that through sheer coincidence, he had started a Shots prototype just days before H1N1 emerged last spring. So the health desk was able to “turn on a dime” and get the blog up and running immediately. Why has it been so useful? First, Neel said, there was simply too much news to put on the air; the blog was an additional outlet. Second, the news environment was so competitive that the hour between newscasts seemed an eternity — and the blog allowed the health team to post breaking news immediately. Here’s how Neel summarized the centrality of social media in NPR’s H1N1 coverage:

Our experience with the blog really changed the orientation of the journalists on our desk to see the usefulness of a blog and of social media. Dick Knox has started tweeting and really starting to use it as a journalistic tool as other journalists are doing. It really brought us into this age. It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve seen happen here at NPR.

Neel wrapped up with ideas for future national coverage and for future local coverage (these are screenshots of his webinar slides):

[Joe Neel, FluPortal webinar]

It’s well worth a few minutes to watch Neel’s full presentation:

[FluPortal]

You can see the entire webinar 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.

Lorna Benson [MPR]

Lorna Benson reports on health care for Minnesota Public Radio. For much of the last few months, her news director asked her to focus full-time on pandemic flu; a colleague helpfully stepped in to cover other health-care stories. As a result, MPR’s coverage of H1N1 has been terrifically thorough. You can find Benson’s current and archived reports on MPR’s H1N1 page.

We invited Benson, who will also be presenting at FluPortal’s webinar on January 28th, to describe how she has been following the H1N1 story through its various twists:
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Stories were straightforward and plentiful in the early weeks of H1N1’s fall flu wave. The outbreak severely strained the health care system, it threatened the lives of many young, healthy people and it caused logistical and ethical challenges for public health officials charged with distributing limited amounts of vaccine. We covered these situations and many, many more on a daily basis for months. But as the pandemic evolved our coverage evolved too.

During the first several weeks of the outbreak we reported on every Minnesota death that was conclusively linked to the virus. We focused on these early deaths because our listeners needed to know that H1N1 flu was disproportionately affecting children and young adults. But as the deaths continued and in a sense came to be expected, we dialed back on that part of our reporting. We shifted fatality information primarily to our newscasts, unless there was an unexpected surge in deaths that needed to be explained in a more in-depth report.

The vaccination campaign story was another aspect of our pandemic coverage that absorbed an enormous amount of our attention. For many weeks Minnesota had little more than a trickle of vaccine and demand for those doses appeared to be incredible. We devoted a lot of time to telling people where they could go to get vaccine.

But in the midst of the shortage, I also heard stories from some of my personal acquaintances and friends that they were able to easily get H1N1 vaccine, even though they were not in any high-priority group. I learned that several clinics had too much vaccine and had been quietly vaccinating anyone who wanted the doses. I found this particularly interesting because it was at odds with the information I was getting from state officials about the vaccine distribution process. So I reported on the discrepancy.

Shortly after our report aired several big local public health agencies announced that they were going to open up their vaccination clinics to everyone too, against the advice of the Health Department. They also had too much vaccine, and didn’t want the doses to sit on their shelves any longer than necessary. One county health official told me later that he decided to schedule a mass vaccination clinic, against Health Department advice, after hearing our report on the discrepancies in the vaccination campaign.

Eventually the urgency surrounding the outbreak and the vaccine campaign began to ease as fewer illnesses were reported and hospitals and clinics returned to normal operations. It wasn’t clear though if the virus would really disappear, or mount a comeback in a few weeks or months. So we asked some researchers who tracked flu in the Southern Hemisphere whether a third wave was likely.

For now it appears the H1N1 fall outbreak is over in Minnesota. That means we finally have the time to reflect on the pandemic and assess whether the response could have been better. In a recent report we looked at why public health officials relied so heavily on an already overburdened private health care system to give out H1N1 vaccine. For people in public health, the answers to these questions may be obvious. But they’re not for many of our listeners. Our reporting helped inform them about the state of their public health system.

We still keep tabs on the status of the outbreak. In fact we just experienced a slight uptick in influenza-like illnesses after the holidays. Is a third wave on its way? Who knows. We’ll just have to wait and see. But even if another wave doesn’t materialize there are still pandemic stories worth reporting. Of course the challenge is keeping listeners interested. We’re trying to do that now by asking the deeper questions that often fall by the wayside in the heat of covering a big story, but are worth revisiting once things have calmed down.
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Update 22 January 2010: Listen to two of Benson’s more recent H1N1 reports below. Just click on the “play” arrow to start.

“New Zealand offers clues to H1N1’s future”

“H1N1 reveals weak spots in nation’s preparedness”

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.

[Unitied Nations / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

The earthquake in Haiti last week was a sudden, devastating blow to a nation already under considerable strain. Relief efforts launched immediately to save lives and deliver care and supplies to the survivors.

The needs and concerns of the Haiti relief efforts are obviously quite different from the issues faced by communities with large numbers of H1N1 cases. While our efforts on this website — curating web tools, tips for using social media, and aggregating resources for reporters — are done with an eye to covering the H1N1 pandemic, one of the goals of the FluPortal project is to advance public media infrastructures and capabilities for crisis response more generally.

Over the last week, we have seen an impressive number of Haiti-related online and social media initiatives that provide some valuable lessons public media can take away as we continue the conversation of preparedness and how local stations and content producers can play a valuable role during a crisis situation. Here are a few of the trends and highlights.

• Twitter — In the hours after the earthquake, Twitter reminded us of its power to provide information channels when most other means of communication are down. Many news organizations are using the new Twitter Lists functionality to curate feeds originating from within the affected areas of Haiti. Examples include NPR, the New York Times, and CNN. And a quick search of Twitter returns the latest tweets using using the hashtag #haiti. Media outlets with an existing presence on Twitter were able to utilize the platform to enhance their coverage.
• Flickr — Some of the first images we saw of the destruction caused by the earthquake were found on Flickr. Additionally, Flickr’s API is being used to provide a photo search engine for missing persons. And, as we have highlighted here on FluPortal.org, the photo sharing service can be a great source for Creative Commons licensed images to use on your station’s website.
• Mobile giving — In the first week since the earthquake, over $20 million has been given via text message donations. Mobile donation opportunities via SMS short codes have received extensive media promotion, and the numbers of donations continue to increase. Consumers embracing this type of giving has obvious implications for future crisis response planning (not to mention the business models of non-profits everywhere).
• Crisis Camps — The realm of public media makers continue to expand as tech savvy volunteers come together to build social media tools to meet the specific needs of a crisis situation. Over the weekend, Crisis Camps were held in a number of cities and they produced valuable initiatives that have the potential to make a real difference in Haiti in the days and weeks ahead.
• Ushahidi — The crisis visualization platform launched a Haiti website that allows individuals (both within and outside of Haiti) to report emergency incidents and crisis information via web and SMS. The goal is to connect response teams and aid worker with those in immediate need.
• Google Response Page — Google is providing a number of tools that utilize the power of their existing applications and infrastructure. Individuals can donate to Haiti relief efforts via Google Checkout, make free calls to Haiti using Google Voice, and view updated satellite imagery of Haiti via Google Earth. In addition, they have launched a People Finder widget to assist those searching for loved ones in Haiti.

There are themes here that public media outlets can consider in their general crisis planning. Information — the ability to gather and move accurate news and information within and outside of a crisis zone.  Technology — what kinds of tools are at your disposal (online, mobile, social media)  that can be utilized in emergencies? And inclusiveness — people outside a crisis want to help those affected. How can we facilitate and channel that goodwill, both financially and in active, constructive ways?

Moving forward, FluPortal will continue to monitor the Haiti response situation and engage those involved to continue the discussion about public media and crisis response.