Outbreak Abroad
“Outbreak. The word spawns chills and premonitions of hacking coughs, boils, oozing sores and death. Emerging viruses in the Middle East or East Asia, such as MERS and H7N9, are certainly frightening, but how does the coverage by outsider media compare to the sentiments of those reporting from ground zero of an epidemic?”
This is a question science blogger and NPR reporter Nsikan Akpan will be exploring in the current installment of OpenSciLogs, a Creative Commons, open source, crowd-funding story project powered through SciLogs.com and our partners.
Nsikan will interviewing journalists and bloggers living near the epicenter of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, comparing their views with those covering the situation from abroad. He will be posting his raw interviews and other notes here (Google Drive). There is also a Google Doc here, where you can contribute your own reporting on the outbreak, engage with journalists who have been covering it, or simply give your thoughts on Ebola coverage you’ve seen in the news or on social media. We really, REALLY want your input.
Our first priority is getting you engaged. But if you can donate, we are also raising funds to donate to health organizations in West Africa to help Ebola patients (you can even tell us where you’d like to see the money go). Any little bit will help. If we pass our goal of $1,ooo, we will even start paying freelance journalists to write about the 2014 Ebola outbreak at SciLogs.com on a sustained basis in an attempt to bring you the best information on this crisis.
Watch soon for Nsikan’s first interviews and updates on the story at his blog That’s Basic Science.
More coverage of Ebola at SciLogs.com:
Covering Ebola — A Q&A with reporters and researchers actively following coverage of the current Ebola outbreak
Covering Ebola 2014 — Ebola was first discovered by a veterinarian. Our vet bloggers gives us its history.
