Hurricanes and Media Conference Set for FIU

By: Nekoro Gomes While the three-day ?Hurricanes and the Media Conference? scheduled for March 31, 2006 at Florida International University may seem like an emergency clinic for journalists who were unprepared for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the planning process came more than a year before either hurricane had ever formed.

?Katrina and Rita were sort of ironic,? says Allan Richards, chair and assistant professor at the Journalism and Broadcasting Department. Hugh Gladwin, another journalism professor, had the idea a year ago. Richards says he contacted one of Gladwin?s colleagues, Hugh Willoughby, a professor in the school?s Earth Sciences Department, "and we were talking about developing a course that addressed natural disasters and weather reporting.?

Gladwin, an expert in hurricane research, and Willoughby, the former director of the Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorology Laboratory, are expected to serve as panelists during the media conference. Other panelists expected to appear include Martin Merzer of the Miami Herald; Frank Lepore, a public affairs official at the National Hurricane Center, which is housed at FIU; Bryan Norcross, the director of meteorology for local television affiliate CBS 4 and Bill Massey, the former director of Hurricane Project Management at FEMA.

?We want to find a way to bring meteorology and journalism together, to talk about providing information and to do it in a dispassionate way instead of just scaring the public,? says Richards, who went without power in his home for 19 days when Hurricane Wilma struck his home.

The conference is open to print and broadcast reporters throughout the country, but Richards believes the event is especially important for journalists from the southeast region of the United States, an area particularly affected by last year's hurricane season.

The conference will focus on helping reporters and media meteorologists communicate with hurricane centers in advance of a storm warning, as well as helping emergency managers get necessary information about a hurricane?s status through different media outlets. There will also be a lecture on important lessons the media should take away from their coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, namely, the political, economic and social implications of a natural disaster.

?A lot of us have gotten very lazy about our environment and I think this is going to bring about an awareness of the fact that we live in a changing ecosystem and that we have to respect our ecosystem,? says Richards.