Benefits in planning for tragedy
I spent much of Saturday preparing for a flu pandemic. (No, I was not having fun yesterday afternoon.) My task: to research and craft the news department's response if a pandemic strikes.
Unlike the planning we did for a Y2K bug, this exercise takes on a frightening gloom with its immense human implications. Considering the probability that for months food supplies would be interrupted, doctors and hospitals would be overcome, emergency services would be stressed beyond their limits, there would be fuel shortages, curfews and school closings, the impact is enormous and long-lasting. I'm identifying how we'll get a newspaper out if half the staff is ill, who the critical staff members are and what sorts of information we need to provide to the community. Fortunately, much of the news department's work can be done from home with a telephone and a computer. (How we would deal with a limited production and delivery staff is daunting to ponder.)
Which brings me to what could be another tipping point for American newspapers in the online transformation, ours included. Circumstances would require us to produce a true online news report with all the advantages of the form: real-time interactivity with citizens, aggressive use of contributing readers and open-source journalism, audio and video. In short, a constantly updated, instantly relevant town square. (Katrina did just that for the Times-Picayune and its Web site, NOLA.)
Don't read this wrong. I'm not wishing for a pandemic. My hope is that in planning for it now, we achieve the actual transformational benefits, both technologically and journalistically, without having to endure the tragic consequences of a pandemic. It will require investment, cultural change and new paradigms, but the industry did it for Y2K and we can do it now.
Oh, I almost forgot. If you have suggestions for our coverage plan, send them in!
Comments (3)
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John, file this under general comments -- Eric Townsend did nice work in today's paper with the Friendship Care story. I've emailed Eric to tell him so, but also wanted to say so publicly.
This is exactly the kind of story the N&R is in a position to do better than just about anyone else. I hope your reporters are encouraged to pursue more like it in the future. The allocation of time and personnel sure pays off for the readers and the community.
It was an all around swell paper today. Thought you might appreciate hearing that for once.
Posted on June 25, 2006 11:35 PM
I meant to include a link to the story.
Posted on June 25, 2006 11:37 PM
All I have to add is this -- focus on verified scientific conclusions and news people can actually use. So much bird flu coverage has been completely over the top. Some publications I won't mention have published breakdowns of how many people "will" die in each state if a pandemic strikes. To call that "speculative" is a compliment. I'm sure most readers have little idea how many changes the bird flu virus must undergo before it's capable of easy human-to-human transmission. (Yes, I know a mutated version may have had limited human-to-human transmission within an Indonesian family, but according to all available evidence, that version died out already. And we don't know how *easy* that transmission was -- it probably consisted of more than a sneeze in public.)
Alarmism has its benefits -- it's nice to know there's such a multinational effort to decode the virus, contain it, come up with vaccines and so forth. I've read comments from some scientists who think the bird-flu virus itself can't possibly mutate into anything that would threaten a pandemic, and yet they appreciate the planning because we could always be hit by some pandemic we're NOT expecting.
But we can't let that alarmism overwhelm us. It's important to let people know that we're not helpless. I recall reading in The Economist a couple of months back that researchers think they're only a few years away from medicine that would act against ALL influenza, not just the annual strains. Wouldn't that be something? And why is that not "news"?
Posted on June 27, 2006 7:53 PM