sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
hat tip Shiloh
Editor shares tips for reporting on China's mysterious pneumonia
Date: 01/09/20
By Bara Vaida
snip
AHCJ: How did you first find out about this story?
LS: We monitor lots of different news. The first thing I do when I log into my computer in the morning is look at breaking news from health ministry websites. We also monitor government press releases, and news stories from reliable organizations. What has also been instrumental are infectious news blogs … two that were covering this story were FluTrackers and Avian Flu Diary.
Many of the people that run these infectious disease blogs are folks that have been monitoring disease outbreaks for many decades. Their volunteers have a passion for sifting through infectious disease news at the global level. They are all really smart people and they have a good sense of what constitutes a quality news outlet. They are really good at translating reports from different countries, even from China’s provinces. A Chinese provincial website will post something and the people looking for infectious disease stories are good at translating what the country’s health departments post. Sometimes they post things that are in Chinese media about a suspicious outbreak. But we at CIDRAP won’t report on it until we see something official. In this case, we waited to write something until we saw confirmation from the Wuhan Provincial Health department. This is the region where the outbreak began. AHCJ: So you saw this story first on FluTrackers and Avian Flu Diary?
LS: Yes. I am on a first-name basis with the people who run those blogs. They are selfless volunteers. They know the media, they know what a reliable source is. So I’ll reach out to them, if I have questions about something.
more...
https://healthjournalism.org/resourc...1#.XhtfF25FyUl
Editor shares tips for reporting on China's mysterious pneumonia
Date: 01/09/20
By Bara Vaida
snip
AHCJ: How did you first find out about this story?
LS: We monitor lots of different news. The first thing I do when I log into my computer in the morning is look at breaking news from health ministry websites. We also monitor government press releases, and news stories from reliable organizations. What has also been instrumental are infectious news blogs … two that were covering this story were FluTrackers and Avian Flu Diary.
Many of the people that run these infectious disease blogs are folks that have been monitoring disease outbreaks for many decades. Their volunteers have a passion for sifting through infectious disease news at the global level. They are all really smart people and they have a good sense of what constitutes a quality news outlet. They are really good at translating reports from different countries, even from China’s provinces. A Chinese provincial website will post something and the people looking for infectious disease stories are good at translating what the country’s health departments post. Sometimes they post things that are in Chinese media about a suspicious outbreak. But we at CIDRAP won’t report on it until we see something official. In this case, we waited to write something until we saw confirmation from the Wuhan Provincial Health department. This is the region where the outbreak began. AHCJ: So you saw this story first on FluTrackers and Avian Flu Diary?
LS: Yes. I am on a first-name basis with the people who run those blogs. They are selfless volunteers. They know the media, they know what a reliable source is. So I’ll reach out to them, if I have questions about something.
more...
https://healthjournalism.org/resourc...1#.XhtfF25FyUl
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