* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A week from today, the AlertNet you know will look very different...
LONDON, April 18 (AlertNet) - Datelines are a hallowed tradition. A dateline is journalistic jargon for the bit at the start of a story that indicates where the piece was filed, the date of publication and the source. In this piece, it’s “LONDON, April 18 (AlertNet)”.
From April 24, you’ll no longer see “AlertNet” in datelines on this site. Come to think of it, you won’t see this site at all. AlertNet as you know it will be dead and buried.
I’m teasing, of course. The world’s premier independent humanitarian news service isn’t shutting up shop. Quite the contrary. After 15-odd years, AlertNet is morphing into something bigger and - we hope - far better.
A week from today, Thomson Reuters Foundation will merge all its award-winning sites and services onto a single platform: Trust.org.
AlertNet will no longer exist as a dateline. Nor will TrustLaw, our news service covering women’s rights and corruption. Ditto Independent Journalism, our media development arm.
Instead, there will be a single dateline: Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Trust.org will still offer all the news and insight you’ve come to expect from our global team of journalists covering natural disasters, conflicts, health crises and other emergencies. We’ll still hold the aid sector up to scrutiny. Our correspondents in dozens of countries will still provide on-the-ground reportage of the human impacts of climate change.
It’s just that these staples of AlertNet content will now sit alongside our exclusive reporting on other areas at the heart of development and human resilience, from women’s rights to good governance and social innovation. Often, the content will cross-pollinate.
We hope the new site will provide a richer, more coherent experience. We hope it will be easier to find what you’re looking for - whether breaking news on an earthquake or in-depth multimedia coverage of some of the big themes reshaping our world in the 21st century.
The new site will also serve as a gateway to the Foundation’s free services for those at the coalface of social change.
TrustLaw Connect will continue to link NGOs and social entrepreneurs with lawyers worldwide willing to help them for free. Today, our network consists of 287 law firms and corporate counsels assisting 835 organisations in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Fiji, Paraguay, Uganda, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Humanitarian NGOs will still be able to access free Reuters pictures for use in emergency appeals after major disasters. Our jobs market will offer the best roles in the sphere of social change. And our communities section will provide more opportunities for debate, discussion and learning.
Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters Foundation will continue to offer free training to journalists all over the world in everything from health and elections reporting to covering crises and graft.
So stay tuned for the new Trust.org. We trust it will serve you well.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
