By LAUREN FROHNE

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has rocked the small towns that thrive in southern Plaquemines Parish, La. Located in the southernmost tip of the state, and now surrounded by oil-filled bays, Venice and its neighboring towns, Boothville and Buras, have been described by many as "ground zero" of the disaster. Life-long fishermen are now fighting on the front lines of the battle against the oil that threatens both their livelihoods and their community, small businesses are struggling to survive and families are uncertain about what their futures hold.

Cherie Pete is the owner of Maw's Sandwich & Snack Shop, located right off Highway 23, the main road through the peninsula that leads to Venice, in Boothville. Five generations of Cherie's family were born and have been raised in south Plaquemines. Her husband, nicknamed "Hawk," is a commercial fisherman who is now contracting as a clean-up worker for BP.

Known by her family and the community as "Maw," Cherie is struggling to keep her business afloat and her life positive through the disaster.

Cherie said that starting the shop has been a dream of hers since she was six years old, and that it's a place where the community comes together. "It's kind of been a welcome center to new people coming to town, and it's almost been a comfort zone to my community," she said.

Maw's is a training ground for teenagers working their first jobs. She feels the connection to the community and the opportunity is important for the young adults in the community, but she worries about the effects the oil spill might have on their futures. "They're just out of school, they're having fun, but I wish they were paying a little more attention so they could take life a little bit more serious, especially right now. We don't know what tomorrow's going to bring, and I think they need to be preparing themselves," Cherie said. "I have the one girl, she's bound and determined she's going to work at Maw's forever, but, you know, Maw's might not be there forever."

"Cameras just come up to the window and instead of giving an order they're doing an interview," she said. Recently, Cherie has become a voice of her community. She has been interviewed dozens of times by media such as ABC News and The Weather Channel. She believes it's important to continue talking to media. "That's just who I am. I love my community.  I love my family.  And if we don't stand up and start talking about it as a community, or even as individuals, and getting our story out there, no one's going to know we exist."

Because of her media appearances, Cherie has received calls from people located around the U.S. who want to offer her kind words of support. Tears fill Cherie's eyes early one morning as she listens to a woman from Las Vegas, Nev., tell her that everyone in the country is thinking of her and her community and wishing them the best.

A flag, colored with black marker, hangs in front of Cherie's store and states: "Thanks for nothing BP. Obama stand up for us." She said her husband refused to take the flag out on the water to dip in actual oil. "Our national government is just failing us. They are failing us.  They're not standing up to this oil company and making them responsible," she says. "How would they like for us to go by the Washington Monument and just start dumping gallons and gallons of oil all over the Washington Monument?"

"One day, this shop might really end up being a 'mom-and-pop' shop," said Cherie, imagining what life in south Plaquemines might be like without the commercial fishing industry. "I lay at night in bed and pray that everything will be back, but I don't see that happening. I don't want to go to the thoughts of what it's going to be like with everything gone." She is still hopeful. "My hope is that they get this all stopped, get us cleaned up, to be back, next spring, flowers in the marsh blooming, trees in the marsh turning green again. I want to go out there for that April fish, you know, just hop on that boat, say, 'Oh my god, that's a beautiful day, let's go on the boat.' That's what I want back."

Photos by Lauren Frohne

By JESSEY DEARING

After 40 days on the road, it's time to head home and begin editing content. Between one story based in two towns more than 1,000 miles apart and another about the BP oil spill in the Gulf, I've been home a total of nine days since May 10. As much as I enjoy being on the road, meeting people and gathering content, there is a time to return to the newsroom.

Traveling and working remotely can be stressful and exhausting at times, but the work is exciting and each day brings new experiences and people into your life. Strangers opened their homes to me to document the way they live and work. I spent 22 hours on a shrimp boat with a life-long shrimper in Venice, La. I helped to interview anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear activists in Vermont.

I created a map in Google Maps to highlight the places I have traveled and things I have been documenting. I will be adding more photos and video links to the map the rest of the week.

I also compiled a list of fun facts about my travels:

• 40 days on the road beginning May 10
• 15 beds
• 4 planes and 6 rental cars
• 26 total hours on shrimp and charter boats
• Too many pounds of fried and fast food
• 10,000+ miles (including city miles)
• 16 states: NC, VA, GA, AL, MS, LA, PA, VT, MA, NH, CT, NY, NJ, DE, WV, FL

Back home to the comforts of a forgotten bed and moldy food in the refrigerator. It's time to pay rent and start editing.

By LUCA SEMPRINI

A two-way communication tool, social media raise both challenges and opportunities. For example, organizations can take advantage of social media's dialogical characteristics (e.g. Twitter's reply function, Youtube comments, Facebook "likes," etc.) to engage in conversations with stakeholders, increase brand reputation and build mutually beneficial relationships.

But social media's penetration raises unprecedented challenges, especially in terms of crisis communications. Virtually any Internet user has now the ability to share a message with a wide audience, defying corporations' attempts to control media coverage. The case of BPGlobarPR on Twitter exemplifies this concept.

Created by a mysterious user who goes under the pseudonym of Leroy Stick, this account posts caustic tweets about the infamous oil company behind the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf Coast. Most importantly, it does so by pretending that the posts come from a BP's communication practitioner.

The case raised many questions among online communications pundits, ranging from publics relations ethics to the legal aspects of online impersonation. To me, it exemplifies the need to be proactive and strategic in social media management.

Before the creation of the BPGlobalPR account, BP updated his original Twitter account sporadically, mostly with one-way promotional messages (i.e. not engaging in dialogue with other users). However, the fake account's rapid rise to fame weakened the company's ability to spread its messages online. BP had to be more vocal, but its poor social media track record hindered its ability to break through the clutter and shape online conversations about the spill.

So far, the numbers favor BPGlobalPR. The account shows 162,760 followers (vs. BP's 14,512), and is featured in 4,584 lists (compared to BP's 809).  (All numbers as of June 14, 2010). Finally,  BPGlobalPR follows about 800 more users than BP, showing a greater commitment to listening to the various constituents impacted by the spill (see the importance of reciprocation in social media).

So how can BP defend itself? From a legal standpoint, the company requested that the account holder be asked to comply with Twitter's guidelines regarding parody and change the information in the "Bio" field to show the account's lack of authenticity. This move seems relatively mild compared to the company's more aggressive approach about traditional media outlets.  For example of this approach, see the following video:

Ironically, the request fired back at the company, as the fake account changed its information to "We are not associated with BP, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 52 days." (This statement has been changing daily, accordingly with the beginning date of the spill). Perhaps BP could have taken down the fake account, but it would have likely just resurrected with a different user name.

In the end, this case shows the importance of abiding by social media's rules of engagement and having a strategy in place. BP did not nurture enough its relationships on Twitter, and quickly lost grasp of the public conversation on the social network.

By ANDREW GAERIG

At this point, the only thing rivaling the amount of oil pluming into Gulf waters is the number of information graphics documenting the amount of oil pluming into the Gulf.

It's important to keep in mind that this is still a relatively new phenomenon. While journalists have always scrambled to cover major stories from every angle, newsrooms and websites are now churning out informative visual and multimedia content at record rates. (There is, naturally, an infographic documenting the rise in the number of infographics.) Visual journalists still struggle with the ability to cover breaking stories. Information editing, design and usability can suffer under time constraints.

The Washington Post's oil spill infographic.

Infographics explaining the oil spill have mostly fallen into two categories: maps visualizing the spread of the oil spill and illustrations dedicated to putting the spill into context.  The New York Times offers up a clean, non-Flash interactive map. The user-friendly slider interface and illustrations are predictably austere and informative. (I wish the bars to the right on the first tab - juxtaposing the size of the Exxon-Valdez spill to the BP spill - were more noticeable.) Nola.com offers substantially the same information, but their block-interface - without a pause or replay button - is substantially more difficult to use. (Also note how they use a Flash tween class to "morph" the oil spill for the first several days but not for the rest of the timeline.)  NOLA.com also offers another map, static this time, to show how local wildlife will be affected.

Maps are only one way to explain the extent of the spill.  Next Generation Oil & Gas offers two undeniably beautiful contextualizations. Their icon-heavy approach and simple color scheme is, visually, very appealing. Their insistence on using circles to compare sizes - our brains are better at computing area than circumference - can be frustrating. Other sources attempted to explain the "Top Kill" operation via infographics. For our money, the best of the lot was BBC News' step-based animations. It achieves what all infographcis should seek: to explain a complicated concept in a simple, beautiful way.

Often times the best approaches are the most novel.  Another Next Generation Oil & Gas graphic compares the oil spill to the production on a wind farm. Another favorite is PBS' widget that estimates the total gallons leaked by allowing users to adjust the leak rate (see top of post).

More examples of map-based infographics:

The Washington Post (shown above) offers a dense but surprisingly readable map of the oil spill.

Infographic World offers up a map-and-extras example of what can happen when a graphic tries to display too much information.

More examples of context-based infographics:

Good provides a visually rich oil primer.

The Wall Street Journal offers a bushel of helpful illustrations.

LiveScience explains the spill.

Next Generation Oil & Gas looks at the world's largest oil spills.

Mother Nature Network takes a look at the oil spill by the numbers.

By MIKE EHRLICH

Some actions taken to minimize the effects of the oil spill in the Gulf also address another worrisome issue for those that live in coastal communities: coastal erosion.

Sand bags line a Gulf island to protect it from coastal erosion and the oil spill. Photo by Mike Ehrlich.

While we were in Venice, La., last week, helicopters continuously flew overhead hauling large bags of sand and dropping them onto islands just off the coast. Once on the ground, volunteers and workers - some of whom are from the National Guard - arranged the bags into a tight barrier.

Richard Blink, Jr., 23, said he's glad to see this strategy being utilized, even if it is just a temporary solution. Blink started a local company called Empire Environmental Solutions. The company does coastal restoration and oil field mitigation using natural methods, like cypress trees and sand fences, to create barriers.

"There's a wash in the beach, and when the tide comes up and the surf is high, water just pours through here," Blink said, standing near the sand bag barrier. "And these sand bags are here to keep the oil out. And eventually some sand will build up behind them when the tide picks up."

Blink grew up in the Empire, La., area, and he is a boat captain by trade. He said the Gulf has washed over the land where he used to play when he was young. After the oil spill, Blink quit his boating job in the oil field to focus on his company.

"It makes me lose sleep at night seeing this place washing away," he said. "What made me start the company, one day I was driving the boat, and there was a cold front.  And the land was washing away so bad, I was having to drive the boat around these clumps of cane that were just breaking off and washing away. And I was like, 'Man, this is so sad, I can't just continue to work in the oil field and just see this. I have to be doing something actively.'"

Blink also said he has submitted proposals to address the oil spill with natural methods such as native vegetation, sand fence and rocks, but he said that BP is "dragging its feet."

"BP's inaction has started to make me question myself," he said. "I'm starting to wonder if I did the right thing, if I should have stayed at the cushy oil field job instead of this - I submitted my proposals and just nothing is happening."

Richie Blink, Jr., steers his boat through canes in the Gulf. Photo by Mike Ehrlich