The kind folks at the Poynter Institute today posted a few links to resources for covering earthquakes and tsunamis. The timing of this was perfect. I was smack in the middle of building a graphic on each of those topics.
Included in these links was a 48-page PDF document — called the National Media Tsunami Guidebook…
…published by a consortium of U.S. agencies including the U.S. Geological Survey, the Federal Emergency Management Administration and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
On page six of this document is a pretty good diagram of how a tsunami is formed (click for a larger view, if you wish).
Now, I ended up not using this for reference. I found another diagram source that I liked a bit better, despite it being lower in resolution.
But still, I couldn’t help but be amused when I saw this.
Uh-oh. And they just updated this document two months ago! Looks like someone could have used a copy editor.
For what it’s worth, I also wasn’t crazy about the poor little guy on the far right of that diagram, running for his life.
You know who else needs copy editors? Local TV news operations. And other local TV news operations. And Baseball jersey manufacturers. And Kansas State University. And the New York Jets, the Minnesota Vikings and the St. Louis Cardinals. And college athletic department ticket offices. And the Virginia general assembly. And college alumni magazines. And pharmacies. And the makers of Sudafed. And Borders bookstore. And Tea Party candidates. And city and county Boards of Elections. And South African traffic cops. And Google News’ ‘bots. And billboard companies. And sign painters. And rubber stamp designers. And restaurants, breakfast joints and cake decorators. And South Africa’s New Age newspaper. And the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times (Hey! A repeat offender!), the Virginian-Pilot, the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinoisian, CNN and Time magazine. And newspapers in the U.K. And drive-in movie theater managers. And Home Depot and manufacturers of “hoodies.†And T-shirt designers. And road paving contractors.
