Constant readers, I am thrilled to let you know that SUPERBUG is among a select list of blogs invited to be featured on GlobalPost, a gutsy and innovative new online news site that launches today.

GlobalPost is the creation of Charles M. Sennott, formerly an award-winning foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Boston Globe, and Philip Balboni, founder and former president of New England Cable News. The service links 65 foreign correspondents living in 46 countries. The founders say in their introductory note that they are:

…acutely aware of the fact that quality journalism in America is threatened more profoundly today than at any time in our history from an unprecedented combination of forces: the transformational power of technology and the internet, the dramatic erosion in the economic underpinnings of the traditional media, and a steady migration of the most devoted consumers of news as well as younger people to new content platforms, most importantly the web.
GlobalPost is a direct response to these forces. Our mission is to provide Americans, and all English-language readers around the world, with a depth, breadth and quality of original international reporting that has been steadily diminished in too many American newspapers and television networks. GlobalPost is at the leading edge of what we hope and believe will become a new flowering of journalism in the digital age, built around new models of financial support.

The site has a number of pages and options, and a notable commitment to transparency in its reporting. Sennott takes new visitors through the details in his editor’s blog. For an outside take on why GlobalPost is worth reading and supporting, read editor and digital consultant Ken Doctor’s thoughtful take.

I know that all of you who gather here regularly already understand the irrelevance of borders to infectious disease control. (For just a few recent examples, see the MRSA outbreak in a Prince Edward Island hospital, the astonishing lack of hand-washing in British health care, and the movement of the pig strain of MRSA from the Dominican Republic to New York City.)

And therefore I know you understand the crucial importance of reliable journalism from abroad. So please welcome this intriguing effort and visit the new site. I’ve placed a GlobalPost button in the right-hand column.

(And just to add, because it’s important to say such things: No money is changing hands here. I don’t get paid for being featured there, and there are no revenues accruing anywhere else. Also, nothing about being featured on GlobalPost changes anything we do or say here: The site remains on Blogger, and your comments stay within this community and continue to be moderated by me.)