Randy Douthit
It is hard to produce against a pandemic and harder when you are the only entity. Randy Douthit owns Laposte Media, which he founded in 2017. The pressures of producing content are always high but higher when people’s attention span decreases due to illness or worry for loved ones. And for multi-media company owner Randy Douthit, that means balancing the needs of his team and the demands placed on them by those suffering from severe flu symptoms or recovering from surgeries and treatments related to those symptoms.
Douthit has been affected by H1N1. He had his first experience with the flu, not as a human patient but as an owner and operator of a media company. Laposte Media is a multi-media entity that covers local news in Atlanta, Georgia, with its flagship TV station LTV Channel Nine. As a producer, he creates content for broadcast and print. His website features various news sections, including pieces written by his team, where they share facts, statistics, and personal stories of experiencing or investigating different aspects of the pandemic as it unfolds. They have also been posting videos of news segments and interviews with state officials.
Douthit discovered the pandemic first-hand when his daughter became a patient at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta after coming down with the flu. He decided to stay home as he waited to hear reports about her condition and was able to use his time to monitor the web-based channels that were already a part of his Laposte Media holdings.
The demand for news about the pandemic was high, which is not uncommon during times of crisis. And Douthit says that things are in crisis mode because people worry so much about their loved ones who have caught this virus or are recovering from having had it. The information Douthit was getting from the web differed from what he had gotten from his daughter’s doctors. The docs reported that her condition had improved, and she no longer showed signs of pneumonia or concerns about the flu. But Douthit’s internet sources were not as reassuring. He received more than two dozen updates on her condition, which gave him more insight into the severity of her symptoms, how long they would last, and how serious they might be. It changed his perspective on whether she would recover.