Transcript for Joseph B Treaster Knight Chair

Well, 1h2o is a very special creature

It is a.. it focuses on water, water issues all over the world.

We distinguish ourselves in one way

and that is by creating almost entirely original material.

All the material on the website really is original.

We have writers around the world who are living in this world of water crisis,

as we say it.

They are writers and they are taking to their neighbors and others in the region.

So, we are hearing local voices,

we are hearing them in a worldwide context.

So I think we are doing something important and quite different.

The challenge here is to find a way to tell the local story.

And tell it in a way that the world can understand it.

So, I find myself working as editor and coach

and, in many cases, friend

with the writers, talking about what it is they want to write and

and what it is we need to do to make it

understandable, intelligible to the rest of the world.

Sometime it is as simple as an unusual phrase or term

that is only regional.

Other times it is a ...

... the classic communication process

of shorter, sharper, more staccato sentences.

Everyone of us has a tendency to write long, long sentences

and it is hard to follow.

So, it is a exciting thing because

the stories that we know are out there

and that we are discovering

are really moving stories.

And it is not really much of a stretch

to get that local story into a form that the world can understand it

and then the impact is enormous.

There are actually a lot of similarities in working on this particular startup

and being a reporter who has work on big stories all over the word,

the United States and many other countries.

In both cases you really need a lot of enterprise, a lot of entrepreneurialship.

You have to find the stories,

you have to figure out how to put those stories into terms that

people back home, and in another countries, can read them.

I have always worked for a newspaper,

or mostly work for a newspaper

that was worldwide.

So I have that worldwide perspective as an audience

and now I come to this Internet, website,

and I am not just the correspondent now,

I am the editor, I am the photo editor,

I am the copy editor

I am in some cases even making myself think like the publisher and the advertising director.

We want to know what are all the ramifications of

what we see in this Internet website

that can have the most impact.

I really believe strongly in the subject we are working with

and just as I always believed in my stories

when I was producing one at the time

now I got this, this

kind of a theater, almost orchestra, working together

and we are getting very good response,

and it is quite rewarding.