thinking about

Live from Port au Prince

Tonight you'll see every journalist report 'live from Port-au-Prince'. They will review the devastation, highlight the heroes and question the rebuilding process, all in a six minute segment. Then we will be onto the oil spill, the terrorist attacks in Uganda, the last minute goal in the World Cup and other issues facing of the world. A number of reporters have been on the ground every day since the quake, they aren't going anywhere. Truly dedicated individuals that continue to file reports, interview families and chase up government officials and aid agencies despite the appetite for this story growing weak. We will get a blip during the elections, especially if their is violence, but this may be it for major reporting. Remember Katrina? That was on US soil and how often we hear about that after the first year. Like Katrina, this is a five year process, one rife with hurdles and tough choices.

It's time for the last responders

On Monday, the six month anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, many of us working on the ground will look and think about the true heroism of the first responders, the resilience of the affected community and the utter frustration and huge hurdles that face us in the rebuilding process. Sitting in a meeting last week with Haitian architects and builders many were stunned to hear that the Haiti earthquake was no longer in the news in the United States. In the information age the oil spill has drowned Haiti out of the news cycle. It is time for BP to make amends and win back the respect of the global community. They can do it with a eight word press release.

BP will build every water well in Haiti

This week Bruce Nussbaum, noted design critic and professor of Innovation and Design at the Parsons School of Design, took shot across the bow with his piece "Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?". Sounds scary, doesn't it?