NEW YORK Reuters' AlertNet, the humanitarian news portal, has won financial backing from Great Britain's Department for International Development to create services to help journalists reporting on humanitarian crises.
The amount of financial backing was not revealed.
AlertNet's "MediaBridge" services are being developed in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian earthquake, and less-publicized emergencies. "Journalists are telling us that they need help to cover more of the ongoing and forgotten crises," said AlertNet Editor Mark Jones.
Planned services include a directory of relief-agency contacts, background briefings, a guide to information sources on the Web, a database of humanitarian statistics, media monitoring to quantify the volume of coverage, and more. AlertNet will also publicize the best examples of crisis reporting.
"MediaBridge" is being developed based on the findings of a 2004 study of journalists and relief agencies conducted for AlertNet by the Columbia School of Journalism.
