Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The one, simple call that wasn't made

With (almost) every news organization scrambling to find local connections to disaster in Haiti, the Herald-Press was asleep at the wheel once again.

The modus operandi of the H-P has been to wait for press releases to cross their desks before reprinting it verbatim as a breaking news story. Rarely have they left the newsroom to track down a real story.

When the earthquake struck Haiti, it would have seemed a natural instinct for real reporters in Huntington to start making calls to the churches in the county to see if any of their congregations had sponsored mission trips to the region in the past. Another call could have gone out to local resident David Dean, who has led many such trips to the Dominican Republic, and who has many contacts with those who have taken similar trips to neighboring Haiti.

But perhaps the first call would have gone out to Huntington University, which supports mission trips all across the world.

If someone at the Herald-Press had made that one, simple call, they might have had THIS story before it showed up on the NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, Jan. 19, nearly a week after the earthquake hit. The people featured in the story are Huntington University graduates.

One man's mission of hope in Haiti:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34944550#34944550


In that same light, kudos to the Huntington TAB, which ran a story on local relief efforts earlier this week, including the one above on the Huntington University grads, as well as other relief efforts from our area.

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