Katrina, US and us

BATON ROUGE – The first anniversary of hurricane Katrina has once again attracted an army of journalists to New Orleans, site of the worst natural disaster in American history. While Tuesday's anniversary promises to bring even more attention to one of the most documented events in national journalism, many residents of the flood- ravaged Crescent City continue to insist that reporters are missing...

BILOXI, Miss. - Mississippi's Hurricane Katrina story fell victim to the media's craving for the "sexy" story and to a national public's hunger for dramatic footage of rescues from rising levee waters rather than the destruction of a coastline, media critics and observers agree. The story of Katrina's damage in Mississippi quickly took second place to a levee breach in New Orleans that flooded the...

BILOXI, Miss., April 8 – Glenn Currie, an architect, slid 50 cents into a coin box here the other morning and pulled out a copy of The Sun Herald, the local daily published in nearby Gulfport. "I read it every day," he said. "They report what we need to know." Mr. Currie, 59, said he especially appreciated the paper's before-and-after series, which features a building before Hurricane Katrina...

PALM DESERT, Calif. -- Staff members of the New Orleans newspaper that survived Hurricane Katrina are facing a continuing dilemma _ how to report objectively about a story in which they are key players. "Like our readers, we're also the ones to whom the events happened, at once narrator and subject," said Jim Amoss, editor of The Times-Picayune. "The intersection of these two roles has been...

NEW ORLEANS – To New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, the front porch gatherings felt like an extension of his work – another way to talk with his neighbors about everything that had happened since Hurricane Katrina. A collection of old and new friends arrived on the stoop of his Uptown home most nights following the storm. Their stories flowed, along with the cold bottles of Abita...

For a brief moment in early September, it looked like the United States was about to have a long-overdue national conversation about race and poverty. While the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans flooded and thousands of poor – and predominantly black – residents waited on rooftops to be rescued or stumbled their way to the Superdome in hope of assistance from the authorities, for once a bright light...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The journalists who survived Hurricane Katrina and managed to keep publishing from the disaster zone have a new appreciation for their readers as well as the media's crucial role in debunking rumors, several editors said Wednesday. Many reporters lost their homes in the huge storm and have been separated from their families, but are sustained by how appreciative readers are to...

HURRICANE KATRINA SPURRED A SURGE in online ads by charities last month, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance. Impressions by public service organizations such as The Red Cross accounted for 14 percent of all ads, up from 6 percent in September of 2004. Within that category, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies accounted for 10 percent of all impressions--up...

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Hurricane Katrina coverage helped boost ratings at the four cable news channels in the third quarter, with CNN and MSNBC posting their best viewership levels since the Iraq war started in the second quarter of 2003, according to Nielsen Media Research data issued Tuesday. Fox News, which was already having a standout summer, jumped 31% over the year-ago period in...

The general in charge of Louisiana's hurricane relief has admonished reporters not to confuse questions with answers, and urged them to give the public facts -- not exaggerations and rumors that several media organizations now say corrupted coverage of Hurricane Katrina. "Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters," Lt. Gen. Russel Honore first told them last week. "We are moving forward. And don't...