Disasters have always presented news organizations with as many community responsibilities as business opportunities; as many ways to help readers as to boost circulation or viewing. The same is true for media delivering news on the World Wide Web.
Floods, plane crashes, tornadoes and hurricanes have consistently driven the largest spikes in Web traffic and, more than any other kind of event, have demonstrated the potent attraction of the Internet as an instant source of breaking news for a global audience.
During the last year, Web-based disaster coverage has reached new levels of sophistication and popularity that demands the attention of all serious Web news operations. Several examples also show that online news operations can best serve themselves and their communities by planning in advance for a catastrophe in their communities, being ready to provide content in multiple media - text, audio and video - and using the latest technology possible.
Take the North Dakota and Minnesota floods this spring. Television covered them along with radio and newspapers, of course. But for the first time with disasters of such magnitude, online sites provided a unique dimension to the coverage. The news organizations, in turn, reaped substantial rewards and learned valuable lessons that are important for all interactive news operations.
For instance, one of the most enduring mental images of the flood is the photos produced by the staff of the Grand Forks Herald. Who can forget those haunting pictures of charred hulks of downtown buildings, awash to their second stories in muddy water?
Crucial Information
But those photos were just a minuscule part of a comprehensive news strategy. The Herald systematically tried to use its site to meet the rapidly changing information needs of a community suffering from physical dislocation and extreme emotional strain. The Herald’s Web site response offers many examples of ways determined, Net-savvy news managers can effectively harness limited resources during times of emergency.
What could be more helpful for a devastated city than an Internet “volunteer resource guide?” Or an up-to-the-minute Web site listing road conditions and closings? Or a site for the flooded-out and homeless to post their locations, so friends and relatives could find them? Or an interactive “How’s my house?” flood-zone map, showing displaced residents which areas were untouched and which were heavily damaged? Or an online-donation location for contributions to relief agencies? They were all part of Web flood coverage in North Dakota and Minnesota this year.
“We knew from the beginning that the Internet site was going to become a focus for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to find out what was going on,” said Herald publisher Michael Maidenberg. “We knew also that we had tens of thousands of refugees who had left the Grand Forks area, who might want to check what was happening back home.”
“It was an opportunity to create the interactivity that Web sites do par excellence,” he said, “so we were able to create a ’sharing page’ so people who were affected could communicate with each other over the Internet and through our site.”
“How is My Home?”
“Most of the people who were not near their homes had just one simple question - ‘How is my home?’,” said Tony Lone Fight, webmaster at Northscape.com during the floods, who has since moved to sister Knight-Ridder site Charlotte.com. “We began to shift our (coverage) focus and did a piece on that subject that helped. It was a direct response to all the feedback that we were getting online.”
As the magnitude of the flooding became apparent, and evacuated residents scattered far and wide waiting for permission to return, Northscape.com also began running interactive maps - of streets and houses that were flooded or untouched; of proposals for limiting rebuilding; of recommended locations for new dikes and levees.
Even though it’s a newspaper rather than a video site, the Herald offered a “flood cam” providing real-time images of rising waters - until the power failed, and the camera was inundated.
Traffic and Advertising Increase
Not surprisingly, Northscape.com traffic soared ten-fold, from an average of 5,000 to 7,500 page views daily before the flood to a peak of 76,000 page views on the day after the fire and flood.
Advertising on the site also soared, especially in the initial weeks after the flood when insurance adjusters, repair companies and others found the Internet was an effective, interactive way to reach an audience that was otherwise virtually unreachable because it was so scattered and out of touch with traditional local media. Much of that advertising strength on Northscape.com has continued long after the floods subsided, Maidenberg said.
Recurring Pattern
Comprehensive Web site disaster coverage brings online publishers a predictable benefit - permanently increased levels of site traffic and advertising. That pattern became apparent in Internet reporting about the first major disaster covered by a local Web site - the crash of TWA Flight 800 on July 18, 1996.
The Boeing 747 exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean less than 50 miles from the home office of Newsday, after production of the Long Island daily newspaper’s first print edition was nearly complete.
“The Web site was a perfect vehicle to deliver all stories from the latest editions - and update them throughout the night as the story evolved,” said Beth DeCarbo, associate editor of Newsday.com.
Newsday.com had not yet established a discussion forum, so it linked to an Internet newsgroup about the crash. It also posted all FBI bulletins and linked to the FBI’s online “hotline,” and received and posted letters to the editor about Flight 800, DeCarbo said.
High Drama of Body Recovery
The Newsday site drew visitors from around the world as the high drama of body recovery, wreckage retrieval and controversial investigative efforts stretched on for months.
Feedback was “very positive, especially from families of the victims living out of state and abroad. One year later, we still have a very strong following,” DeCarbo explained. “We’re seemingly bookmarked by readers all over the world, and now they’re looking at other features on our site.”
Many Not Prepared
The way Newsday or the Grand Forks Herald systematically marshaled their Web resources during such emergencies may have made the process almost look easy. But it isn’t. The fact is, a number of other news organizations have not kept up with the Web-surfing public’s rising expectation that local news Web sites are the best places to visit for local disaster coverage.
For example, a few days after Hurricane Danny slammed into the Alabama and Mississippi Gulf Coasts in July, a quick check of the two most logical area Web sites turned up empty for storm information. Neither the Mobile Press-Register (Ala.), a Newhouse paper, nor the Sun Herald of Biloxi-Gulfport, Miss., a Knight-Ridder paper, had any aftermath coverage on its Web site. The Press-Register site offered a link to the Houston Chronicle’s hurricane page along with a note saying, “We do not offer a complete online service yet.”
Alabama Live, the site of three area newspapers - Mobile, the Birmingham News and the Huntsville Times - was another logical place for Web surfers to seek Danny news. But that site was three weeks from launch when the hurricane tore into the delta. Editor in chief Michael Carmean, formerly of Nando.net and Ohio.com and a veteran of online catastrophe news planning, says comprehensive disaster coverage is an integral part of his strategy for Alabama Live. His says his new site will be ready when the next “big one” hits.
Which brings us to this important question: will yours?
