Disaster News Web site to launch in October
9/22/1998 News media contact: Linda Bloom · (646) 369-3759 · New York by United Methodist News Service A World Wide Web site providing comprehensive information on faith-based responses to tornadoes, floods, hurricanes and other disasters will be officially launched Oct. 1.
Funding partners of Disaster News Network (http://www.disasternews.net) include the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) and Church World Service, the relief agency of the National Council of Churches. The site is already up and running.
The idea for the site originated from another faith-based Internet site called Village Life, said
the Rev. Jim Skillington, a United Methodist pastor in the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference. He is executive director of villagelife.org, a not-for-profit communications ministry.
While running Village Life, he discovered that gathering news about disaster response was "a nearly impossible proposition." Skillington also found the need for a news site with a more narrow focus than Village Life, so he talked with people in the faith-based disaster response community to see if a disaster-related network could be built.
Out of those conversations, a case study was conceived. UMCOR and United Methodist Communications were among the organizations that funded the study.
"One of the basic findings of the study was there was no infrastructure to support the reporting out of the news to the church public," Skillington said. Church members did learn about their denomination's disaster response efforts three or four weeks after the fact, but not "in a timely manner." And small, local disasters were getting scant attention.
The study showed that the secular press had trouble getting information on how a broad spectrum of churches responded to disasters, and the news media were hesitant to report what only one denomination was doing.
Skillington presented the findings to the Domestic Disaster Roundtable of Church World Service, which represents more than 25 faith-based organizations. They decided to move forward with the Internet site, he said.
He has been testing the site, originally called Disaster Response Network, online since early May. It had received more than 50,000 page views by the end of June. By the end of August, free-lance writers had contributed more than 200 original stories.
The site offers daily news items and the state news pages.
"We're committed to continuing coverage of a story as long as someone is still helping in that disaster," Skillington said.
What's "news" at Disaster News Network can vary each time a user checks in. On Sept. 17, for example, flood-related stories - from Fort Scott, Kan., to Del Rio, Texas, to Albany, Ga. - dominated the news. Feature stories also pointed out why this year's harvest will be "bleak" for maple producers and why used clothes generally are not welcome donations for disaster victims. About 300 viewers have signed up for a weekly e-mail summary of news stories.
A second component is a database of volunteer opportunities, providing "a point of entry for our faith-based organizations." The database is not yet comprehensive, but two new listings are being added each week.
An "Online Giving" component is under construction. When completed, it will allow funding partners to accept donations in five different ways - by regular mail or telephone pledge, or by using a credit card, Internet check or electronic bank transfer online.
While Skillington does not anticipate that online giving "will instantly produce lots of money," he noted that it is becoming a proven method of giving, based on the experiences of other nonprofit organizations.
Disaster News Network is updated at least once a day and sometimes more frequently.
"The Internet provides us a way of communicating quickly and effectively," Skillington said, "and that's what we're trying to do with this site."
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