The tsunami has taken so many lives and touched so many more that nearly every media outlet in the world will be covering some aspect of this story for a long time. Here are some excellent resources for journalists, from finding sources to backgrounding charities.
AlertNet.org
This comprehensive site (AlertNet.org) gives you a good overview of the latest aid efforts. Created by the Reuters Foundation, the site gathers information from a network of more than 300 humanitarian organizations. Here is a direct link to descriptions of what each aid group is currently doing in Asia related to the tsunami. (See 2003 Web Tips column on this site)
SAJA
The South Asian Journalists Association has compiled an excellent, continuously updated listing of experts and journalists in South Asia, news and opinion links, and ways you can help. It’s at: http://www.saja.org/tsunami.html. Another fantastic resource SAJA offers is its Freelance Forum, which lists more than 367 available journalists in 35 cities in South Asia. If your organization is in need of a freelancer in South Asia to help cover the tsunami aftermath, look here first.
Tsunamihelp.blogspot.com
Professional journalists aren’t the only ones gathering great resources about the tsunami. A group of more than dozen bloggers in Asia have created a weblog offering one of the best compilations of resources, aid, donations, and volunteer efforts, updated more frequently than most news organizations update their websites. This is a great site to use for staying on top of the latest developments, find useful links and discover story ideas: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/
Here’s another blog with a great set of resources: http://wetware.blogspot.com/2004/12/tsunami-relief-efforts.html
Press releases and Experts
PRNewswire has created a special page (registration required) where journalists can easily monitor all the latest press releases related to the disaster.
PRNewswire has also put together a useful list of experts worth interviewing for related stories here. (Regular readers of this column will recognize the first name on the list! You must be signed in to PRNewswire to see this.)
GuideStar
Hundreds of organizations are collecting money for tsunami aid, but how do you know if they’re trustworthy, or how much of the money they’re collecting they’ll spend on aid versus administration? I highly recommend researching nonprofit companies before listing them in your publication. Readers may assume any charities listed are trustworthy, so it’s up to us to check them out first. The site offers this quick link to information about more than 100 of the agencies collecting aid. (For more about GuideStar, see my 2002 column about this site.)
Missing persons sites
Another group of bloggers has created a good site, http://tsunamimissing.blogspot.com, aimed at helping people find missing friends or family. The site has even set up a page on a photo sharing site, flikr, where people can post photos of missing people. A number of other sites are making similar efforts:
- http://tsunamiforum.org/
- http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/28/email.appeals/
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4129995.stm
- http://www.icrc.org/home.nsf/home/webfamilylinks
- http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/categories.cfm?catid=68
- http://asian-quake-tsunamis.onthe-internet.com/
Satellite photos
DigitalGlobe is making a number of high-resolution satellite images available to media for free. The images show the areas hit by the tsunami before, during, and after. Amazing stuff. http://www.digitalglobe.com/tsunami_gallery.html
Know of other valuable links? Post them here.
SEND IN YOUR TIPS
What websites have you used in your reporting? Give the gift of giving this season and send in your tips so I can share them with other readers! Send to poynter (at) jondube.com.
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