American Indians Hit Hard By Swine Flu

December 25, 2009 from APR

Although H1N1 has proven less deadly than originally anticipated, it has taken a serious toll on American Indians.

According to a recent report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the mortality rate from the virus is four times higher among American Indians and Alaska Natives than any other racial or ethnic group.

Phil Stago and his family were hit particularly hard by the virus.

Nationwide Reports Of Flu-Like Illness

Map: Nationwide Reports Of Flu-Like Illness

They live in a tiny house in the tiny town of Winslow, Ariz., just outside the vast Navajo Nation. On a recent morning, his 2-year-old watched cartoons and snuggled with her dad. The baby rocked in a swing.

The mellow day was quite a switch from the drama the household experienced in September, when Stago says swine flu wiped out his family for a whole month.

Stago's son got it first — itchy throat, fever and aches. Then 2-year-old Alicia picked up the virus. She’s feeling much better now, but when her newborn sister, Gabriela, caught swine flu, things got scary.

Stago took her to an Indian Health Service hospital nearby when her fever hit 100 degrees.

"They secluded us from her, and they put her in a little tent of oxygen," Stago says. "[We] had to wear the whole full isolation gowns and gloves and mask. That was pretty scary."

Indigenous People More Vulnerable

When patients require more intensive care than Gabriela did, they're sent to Flagstaff Medical Center, about an hour west of Winslow.

One day during the peak of the second wave of the swine flu virus, the intensive care unit was almost full of American Indians on respiratory ventilators.

The scene reflects a statewide trend. In Arizona, of the more than 1,500 people who have been hospitalized for swine flu, 13 percent have been American Indian. Yet American Indians make up only 5 percent of Arizonans.

Aboriginal Australians and First Nations groups in Canada have reported similar disproportionate findings.

There are plenty of theories as to why indigenous people are more at risk. John Redd, an epidemiologist for the Indian Health Service, says that crowding and poor housing, both risk factors for influenza, are more present in indigenous populations around the world.

In addition to poverty, Redd also points out that American Indians are prone to diabetes and asthma. When you combine swine flu with these pre-existing conditions, the outcomes are worse.

Access to health care is also an issue. There are a dozen Indian health care centers scattered throughout the Navajo Nation, but the reservation is the size of West Virginia.

Cindy Galloway, who works at a family health center that serves American Indians in the Flagstaff area, believes there are other factors contributing to the higher mortality rates.

"They are more stoic people. They don't complain, frankly," Galloway says.

She says it's typical for American Indian patients to wait until their symptoms become severe before they seek treatment.

"People will tolerate feeling bad longer and thinking it's going to go away," Galloway says. "When finally after four or five days they can't even take a deep breath, then they realize that this could be more serious."

Indian Health Service officials say many people have been exposed to swine flu or have been vaccinated now, so there's hope that the next possible wave of the virus, which could come as early as January, won’t be as severe.

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NPR Is Enhancing Its Web Site

By ELIZABETH JENSEN

NPR, the public radio network, is introducing a revamped NPR.org this week, giving users what its executives say is an easier-to-navigate Web site that emphasizes written reporting over audio reports.

It is part of a digital expansion, branded with the new tagline “Always On,” that will include several mobile applications to be available late this summer.

The changes are meant to raise the level of NPR’s journalism and journalistic output, and to make public radio more widely available, not just on local stations but on any format consumers might want, said Vivian Schiller, NPR’s president and chief executive.

“We are a news content organization, not just a radio organization,” Ms. Schiller said.

But NPR is also a membership organization, partly financed by local public radio stations nationwide. While Ms. Schiller said that Web and mobile changes would make it easier than ever to find programming from local stations, they will also make it much more convenient for listeners to bypass local stations, if they choose.

“That’s the risk,” said Jake Shapiro, the executive director of Public Radio Exchange, which works with stations to expand programming options, and just released a new version of its own iPhone application, the Public Radio Player.

“It increases the pressure for stations to offer compelling and distinct programming,” Mr. Shapiro said. “There is definitely some anxiety about how easy these devices make the ability to shop around.”

The changes to NPR’s Web site are intended to make it easier for users to find NPR news reports on a less cluttered home page, or to jump to two other areas of emphasis, Arts and Life, and Music.

Breaking news is already being posted faster, after a merger of NPR’s radio and digital news desks, and a regimen of Knight Foundation-financed digital training for NPR’s journalists. Searching for, sharing and commenting on NPR articles will be simpler, and free transcripts will be offered for the first time.

By next year, when NPR expects to have secured the digital rights, the site will offer entire NPR programs for downloading on demand.

The Web site changes are part of a strategy meant to increase NPR’s share of the midday audience, between its “Morning Edition” and the late afternoon “All Things Considered,” when listening to NPR stations drops considerably, said Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president and general manager of NPR Digital Media.

Instead of short paragraphs that direct users to click on links to audio reports taken from NPR’s programs, the Web site will now offer fully reported text versions of articles, so users can click from their cubicles. “We think the midday experience is much more text-driven,” Mr. Wilson said.

The Web site will flip “from being a companion to radio to being a news destination in its own right,” Ms. Schiller said.

It will not be as comprehensive as some sites, like CNN’s, are, Mr. Wilson said, but will “concentrate on areas where we can be particularly authoritative.” He added, “We’re not in a battle for share with established players who’ve been doing this for 15 years.”

Users can customize the Web site with a link to a local station, a feature that Ms. Schiller said was far superior to the capabilities of the current NPR Web site. Still, she said, “the bypass issue,” as it is referred to internally in public radio, “is not going to go away overnight.” Until it can be sorted out, she added, “first and foremost, we have to serve the audience” by making NPR content as easy as possible to find.

Stations worry about listeners cutting them out of the loop because they get much of their financing through local donations. NPR, however, will experiment this fall with letting users donate to specific local stations directly through the NPR Web site, which Ms. Schiller said could make it easier for stations to raise money and could encourage “impulse donors.”

In the coming weeks, NPR will release free mobile applications for the iPhone, Google’s Android and Symbian-powered phones.

Dozens of public radio apps already are available for the iPhone and other mobile platforms. NPR’s new applications, however, will emphasize news content, offering quick links to articles in written or audio form.

One element that users will not see much of on the NPR Web site is video. An experiment a year ago of adding more video to the site particularly irked local member stations, who did not want competition from video. Video is expensive, Ms. Schiller said, and she and Mr. Wilson are not convinced of its value. “We absolutely should not be heavily invested in video,” she said.

Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media

Mashable, Josh Catone, June 3 - In March of this year, National Public Radio (NPR) revealed that by the end of 2008, 23.6 million people were tuning into its broadcasts each week. In fact, NPR's ratings have increased steadily since 2000, and they've managed to hold on to much of their 2008 election coverage listenership bump (with over 26 million people tuning in each week so far in 2009), unlike many of their mainstream media counterparts.

Compared to cable news, where most networks are shedding viewers, and newspapers, where circulation continues to plummet, NPR is starting to look like they have the future of news all figured out. Or at least, they appear to doing a lot better at it than the rest of the traditional media.

But what is NPR doing differently that's causing their listener numbers to swell? They basically have a three-pronged strategy that is helping them not only grow now, but also prepare for the future media landscape where traditional methods of consumption (TV, radio, print) could be greatly marginalized in favor of digital distribution.

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A Focus On Local

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Though most people think of NPR as a radio station, it's actually a news gathering and production organization that sources and creates content for member stations (which are different than affiliates in that they're completely independent entities). According to new CEO Vivian Schiller, that means that NPR has a culture incredibly devoted to local coverage. "To me, local is the big play, because local commercial radio has abandoned the local market. Local newspapers are withering or sometimes dying. The big national media companies, including excellent ones like The New York Times, cannot afford to be covering every single community. So that leaves a big, gaping hole to serve Americans' local coverage," she told mediabistro.com in April.

Focusing on local information is a very smart approach for two reasons. One, because as Schiller says, it fills a gap in coverage, and two, because many people feel that delivering and aggregating hyperlocal content will be an important part of the future of media. In 2007, Alex Iskold, the CEO of semantic web application company AdaptiveBlue, predicted the rise of hyperlocal information, indicating that extremely targeted local advertising could be the path forward for the ad industry.

"Despite globalization, hyperlocal information is very valuable both to people and advertisers. In the coming years, we will be seeing the rise of a new way to look at information - geography. Inspired by utility and the promise of hyperlocal advertising, startups are racing to build businesses that deliver highly relevant, local information to users," he wrote.

Earlier this week we noted here on Mashable just how much more useful information can be when it is locally relevant. So for NPR, going local is a way to reach disenfranchised listeners, provide more utility, and potentially offer greater value to advertisers when the ad market rebounds.

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A Focus On Social Media

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Another aspect of NPR's winning approach is their adoption of social media. Social media tools are changing the media landscape by allowing consumers to define what's worthy of attention. NPR hasn't sat idly by — they're one of the few mainstream media organizations that is leading the charge in social media channels. Their Twitter account has over 780,000 followers, making it one of the top 25 on the social network (and third among news organizations behind only the New York Times and CNN). Their Facebook Page has over 400,000 fans.

But NPR has embraced social media in more ways than just having an active presence on top social media channels. They've also put social media to work for them. In October of 2008, for example, NPR asked listeners to factcheck the US Vice Presidential debates and communicate findings via a Twitter () hashtag. And in February, NPR's social media strategist (@acarvin) talked about Twitter on air, including hundreds people tweeting back comments in the conversation. Their conclusion? Twitter lets us all share the media consumption experience together, and that's a very positive thing.

NPR doesn't stop at social networking, either — their social media efforts extend to podcasts (they have over 650), blogs (they publish almost 20), mobile apps, and even their own social network. NPR has been recognized for these efforts year after year with multiple Webby Awards.

Social media is helping NPR reach new audiences and connect better with the one they have (which, of course, helps with audience retention).

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A Focus On Ubiquitous Access

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Perhaps the most important aspect of NPR's approach to new media, is that they have an organizational level commitment to allowing listeners and readers to access their content on their own terms. Schiller, who prior to joining NPR at the start of this year was the SVP-GM of The New York Times web site, told mediabisto.com that NPR aims to bring people access to content "online, mobile, whatever people want, podcasts — you name it — so that you have that same sense of the NPR experience wherever you are. As far as NPR.org — sure, I want the traffic to increase, but to me the ultimate goal is not just bringing people to this walled garden that is NPR.org."

That's nothing new for Schiller, who at the Times led the charge to shut down their pay content service, TimesSelect, even though it was pulling in tens of millions of dollars. "Change is happening so fast in the media and the economy that you have to be able to say, 'Forget about what we did then — let's look at what makes sense now,'" she said, which is a very enlightened view for someone who holds a position of power in a mainstream media culture that has for so long been resistant to change.

The same sentiment is echoed by NPR's Senior SVP for News, Ellen Weiss. "We need to put NPR wherever the audience is, and that has to happen online and has to happen on the radio," she told PBS in January. And NPR has delivered.

In July of 2008, for example, the radio organization released a content API that allows developers to remix and reuse any content created by the network. That's led to interesting mash ups like NPRbackstory, which attempts to figure out the news behind trending topics by searching through NPR's archives.

More recently, NPR released a mix your own podcast tool, which gives listeners the ability to easily create their own programming schedule from the organization's audio archives. That, as Schiller and Weiss promised, is NPR at work allowing users to consume media on their own terms.

NPR's commitment to going to its audience rather than making its audience come to them is a smart strategic move. Schiller is convinced that walled gardens and pay walls just drive audiences to "lesser quality news content that is free." If that's true, NPR's blueprint is not only about attracting eyeballs (or in this case, ears), but creating an environment where quality reporting from trained journalists can continue to exist.

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Not Everything Is Rosy

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Unfortunately for NPR, even while their ratings soar, they have not been immune to the economic woes gripping most industries. They cut 7% of their daily news staff in December of 2008 and axed two underperforming shows. NPR faces a projected budget gap of $8 million in 2009, though that's better than 2008's $23 million shortfall.

Still, the future looks bright at NPR. Their 26.4 million weekly listeners are 11 times more than the daily circulation of USA Today, and greater than 9 times more than the prime time viewership of the #1 cable news channel in the US, Fox News. They have 860 local stations in their member network and operate 38 news bureaus around the world — 18 in foreign markets, which is greater than any other news gathering organization. NPR's amazing growth over the past 10 years prompted FastCompany magazine in March to call NPR the "most successful hybrid of old and new media," and wonder if NPR could be the savior of the news industry.

And they owe that success to the culture of open access and audience participation that they've cultivated over the past decade.

Source - http://mashable.com/2009/06/03/npr/