– Columbia news, views & reviews OPINION –

Last week when Sandy came to town, something happened that’s not happened much before.

Providers of services and response agents actually reached out to talk with their Customers … by telephone … by email … by social media … by text … by notices on their Websites.

Here’s a portion of an email that one financial institution sent to its Customers:

“As our region works to restore power and services, we hope you and your families are safe. Our hearts go out to the communities that have been hit the hardest. We want you to know that Chase will stand with you as the recovery effort begins.

“We’ve extended the automatic fee waivers for consumers and small business customers in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington, DC. This will give customers until the end of business on Monday, November 5th to make a deposit or a payment to bring their account current and avoid fees. The waived fees include:

• Overdraft Protection Transfer, Extended Overdraft, Returned Item and Insufficient Funds Fees for deposit accounts.
• Late fees on credit cards, business and consumer loans,including mortgages, home-equity, auto and student loans.
• In addition, we’re waiving all mortgage-related fees and offering 90 days of forbearance mortgage payments for customers seeking assistance in the impacted areas.”

Additionally, there were automated telephone calls from PPL, Comcast and other service providers. In Lancaster and York, the daily newspapers “dropped” their Internet paywalls.

While “closings” were announced on rolling scripts on local television stations, an increasing number of businesses and municipalities added storm updates on their own websites!

Did you notice during an information sharing” press conference, that one of Governor Corbett resources shared that residents can find out more about what’s happening with the use of social media? Government agencies were using Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has learned the value of “over-communicating” when dealing with emergency situations. A page at the FEMA Website says:

“We utilize numerous social media accounts as part of our mission to provide information to the public before, during, and after a disaster and this page outlines all of our official social media accounts.

“We are providing the following links to FEMA’s presence on other third party sites for your reference. FEMA does not endorse any non-government websites, companies or applications. If you think FEMA should use other third party sites or communications tools, then please contact us at FEMA-New-Media@dhs.gov.”

FEMA director, Craig Fugate says, “‘Previously, we have had the ability to communicate at the public –whether it is radio, tv, web pages and even billboards … but our ability to communicate with the public and have two way conversations has been limited.’ Now instead of expecting people to adapt to traditional forms of government communication, Fugate argued government must adapt to the way people have been communicating, using services such as Facebook or Twitter.”

The traditional media landscape has changed markedly with the omnipresence of smartphones, tablets and computers. The immediacy of information is overwhelming. People crave information and they can get it anywhere.

What has been missing are reliable sources to counter the “rumors.” That reliable information source is “official communication” from the source: the bank, the utility, the local government, the institution, whomever.

The message ought to be loud and clear: Citizens, Customers and people need credible, reliable, trustworthy information and they’ll look for it at more than one venue.  But they’ll expect it from the places that serve them! Everyday!

NOTE: This just-released opinion/article from the Nieman Journalism Lab, “Truth and lies on Twitter“, speaks to sifting the truth from the tweets and posts.