Jun 05 2008
Wind, water and change
The hurricane season is underway and coincidently, the University of Miami is introducing it’s newly designed website devoted to water and everything related to water, worldwide. The best weather forecasters are predicting another busy year of storms and they might be right. Their supporting evidence seems stronger this year.
We’re also predicting a busy year at the water website, 1H2O.org, a production of the School of Communication’s Knight Center for International Media. However the wind blows, whether it rakes the land with withering storms or chooses to leave us alone, as it has largely done since Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005, we’re going to have a busy time at 1H2O.org. We don’t depend upon ocean currents, water temperatures, the quality of the air coming of the West African desert or high altitude jet streams.
There’s plenty to say about water and you’re going to be seeing our reports, in words and pictures, from places like Peru, Mexico, Brazil, India, China and countries throughout Africa, Europe, the United States and elsewhere. We’ll be using all the tools of New Media.
We’re focused on water for good reason. Water is in critically short supply in many parts of the world. It is a major element in the debate over climate change. Contaminated water plays a significant role in infant mortality. Some experts believe tension over water rights may lead to war. We’re going to be chronicling develops in all those areas and looking for your feed back.
I’ll be contributing to this blog from time to time from Miami, New York and the rest of the world. In mid-June I’ll be in Belgrade at the International Press Institute’s annual conference and I’ll be filling you in from there on water and other world developments. Later in the summer, I’ll be reporting from Calcutta and Bombay along with Sanjeev Chatterjee, the executive director of the Knight Center for International Media.
I want to hear what you’re thinking, how you’re reacting to 1H2O.org. If you like something, say so. Same goes if you don’t like something we’re writing about. Maybe you think we missed the point. Or maybe we nailed it. Let us know. We’re always in the market for fresh ideas on how to tell the story of water and what it means to our world. We’re especially looking for writers who want to produce articles and v videos for us. We pay good money, $400 for 500 words or less; the same fee for short video stories. Proposals should 50 words or less. That will be your first demonstration to us of bright, tight writing. We expect a lot to be packed into our 500-word articles.
The new look of 1H2O. org is a collaborative effort, involving Sanjeev Chatterjee, me, as the editor of 1H2O,
Matt Byrnes, a School of Communication graduate student and a whiz at website management and design, Chris Delboni, a former foreign correspondent for Brazilian publications in Washington, D.C., and now a mover and shaker at the Knight Center, Luis Rodriguez, the School of Communication webmaster, and many others.
We like the looks. Let’s hear what you think.
