Category: news

Reporting from Iran: a blend of mainstream and newstream media

In the days since the Iranian election and the protests that followed, much has been written, broadcast, tweeted and blogged about how Iranian citizens have seized the power of social media to report what is happening to the outside world. In the United States, the mainstream media has picked up on this phenomenon, but sadly most of the reporting has been about the cool factor of Twitter, amateur video, etc.

But a few mainstream media outlets are getting the hang of new media. They’re aggregating the citizen-journalist reports, lending context, and sharing with the rest of us. Mark Jones of Reuters highlights a few of them in his blog post about running web commentary on Iran.

The challenge of providing the latest to a world hungry for the news from Iran “is to match what TV stations can do when they switch between news bulletins to rolling 24 hour coverage,” Jones writes. “Only the web ought to be able to do so much more given its scope for interactivity.”

In an ideal world you’d want to provide the fastest, most thoroughly verified reports around the clock whether they or not they are from conventional journalists. And as a user I think you’d also want to be pointed in the direction of where you can find out more. If all this was easy then it would have been done by now. But it’s a lot of work. And all news organisations have had to strike compromises on one or more of those counts.

Live blogs that attempt to document the unrest in Iran — such as The Guardian’s and the New York Times lede blog — help to meet some of that need for information and blend the accounts of citizens on the ground with journalists’ analysis and annotation. Jones also discusses (briefly) reporters logs, which rely on the news organization’s staffers instead of citizen journalists, and “the most interesting approach,” aggregated information streaming in from “validated” citizen journalists, such as what Sky News is doing.

“None of these approaches has entirely nailed it,” Jones writes. In his perfect scenario, the ideal blend of mainstream and social-networking media would include:

  • Direct publishing by sources validated by the news organization
  • The ability for live blog anchors to republish and annotate external contributions
  • A means by which participants could add to or critique particular elements of the commentary

What about you? How do you think mainstream and newstream media should converge to cover this unfolding story?

H1N1 and crisis communications preparedness

If there’s one silver lining in the H1N1 influenza hype cloud, it could be this: All of the attention is giving campus crisis communications teams an opportunity to review their planning measures.

For the most part, campus crisis communications is a reactive sort of exercise. Something bad happens, and we react to it. We put out the fires as they pop up.

But the H1N1 situation hasn’t been like that for most of us.

For most campuses, H1N1 is a gathering storm on the horizon. We’re getting the opportunity to watch it form, and in the process we’re getting a chance to review our crisis communications plans in order to be best prepared if (or when) the virus hits our communities.

That’s what we’re doing, right? Reviewing our plans, meeting with other team members, coordinating with the campus health services and emergency response staff, keeping the campus community informed of preventative measures and, if we’re fortunate enough to have a pandemic response plan for our campus, reviewing that document as well.

Like Dennis Miller, I have mixed feelings about all the media coverage of this strain of influenza. After all, some 30,000 people in the U.S. die from the flu every year. But we’re not going to take any chances. Plus, maybe the heightened awareness will lead people to do what they should always do to reduce the risk of catching a flu bug.

So, yes, we’re using this time of gathering storm clouds to get our act together to effectively communicate as much as necessary.

Here are a couple of new resources to help us out:

  • When to call a flu day, from Inside Higher Ed, discusses how campuses are and should respond to the threat. Quotes one expert who thinks campuses may be overreacting, but adds that these responses are “a natural reaction for colleges to want ‘to appear to be doing something, to appease fears. Universities have a lot to take into account, not just spread of disease, but also making sure that parents know that their children are being taken care of. And college students are in fact seen by their parents as children.'”
  • The official CDC social media toolkit for H1N1 communications, via Mashable. The CDC has fully embraced social media during this situation. Let’s hope we do, too.