NABJ Forums

Happy 30th Birthday, NABJ!

2005-12-11T19:31:00.000-05:00

Can it be, already?

On Monday, NABJ turns 30. Say it isn't so!

Click here after 12:01 a.m. Monday, Dec. 12, EST, to join the party!

Abu Ghraib All Over Again -- In New Orleans?

2005-10-02T19:19:00.000-05:00

Racial slurs, and more alleged by inmates caught in New Orleans disaster.

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'That Could Have Been Us'

2005-09-26T21:06:00.000-05:00

Struggling communities see selves in Katrina disaster

An organizer says people in underserved neighborhoods nationwide saw themselves in images of New Orleans residents stranded on rooftops. Katrina has pushed community groups to seek novel ways to provide for their own protection, rather than petitioning a government that may be unwilling or unable to help.

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A Geographic perspective on the hurricanes

2005-09-26T18:36:00.000-05:00

In the frenzy of daily news coverage, an unlikely source emerges for "complete coverage" of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina: National Geographic.

Worth a look »

Texapocalpyse Now (aka How to Blow a Hurricane Out of the Water)

2005-09-24T16:19:00.000-05:00

What a blast!

At least, that's what some thought would be the case for getting rid of pesky, disastrous hurricanes.

Not so, say the skeptics.

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Columnists of Color on Katrina's Many Dimensions

2005-09-13T22:49:00.000-05:00

OK, so eventually, I was going to get around to compiling a bunch of these things. But, Richard was right on top of it again with his column today. (See Richard Prince's Journal-isms.) So, what can I say?

Happy reading:

Ronnie Agnew, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Miss.: 'Sea Coast Echo' still publishing on Katrina's rubble

Betty Bayé, Louisville Courier-Journal: Katrina and Pandora: Debate rages over role of race in slow response

Donna Britt, Washington Post: Choosing to Care And Comfort in Katrina's Wake

Sylvester Brown Jr., St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Let's focus on helping those in need

Yvonne Bynoe, The Black World Today: After Katrina: Is There Justice or Just Us?

Tammy L. Carter, Orlando Sentinel: Stress test: Not knowing the fate of friends

Tammy L. Carter, Orlando Sentinel: There's plenty of blame, let's fix things first

Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: Evcuees from New Orleans try to start over in a strange town

Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: What matters is helping evacuees, families get back together

Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: San Antonians' goodness far exceeds caller's venomous views

Desiree Cooper, Detroit Free Press: Storm shows poverty's ruin

Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: A failure of vision

Ralph De La Cruz, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: What Katrina dug up: years of neglect

Jack Duggan, New Pittsburgh Courier: The Louisiana Superdome of Shame

Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: Shell game at gas stations pays big

Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News: Can anyone explain the bizarre call to keep aid convoy in S.A.?

Bob Herbert, New York Times: No Strangers to the Blues

Nick Jimenez, Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times: Are we ready here for a Katrina-sized storm?

Chip Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: Police made their storm misery worse

Roy S. Johnson, Sports Illustrated: Katrina's devastation puts sports world in its place

Colbert I. King, Washington Post: Rebuilding the Gulf and Goodwill

Jerry Large, Seattle Times: Gulf poor left behind by Katrina and neglect

Errol Louis, New York Daily News: The ugly truth

Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com: White House's 'Blame Game' Spin Evidence of Our Manmade Disaster -- Bush

Sheryl McCarthy, Newsday: Katrina highlights Bush's incompetence

Byron McCauley, Cincinnati Enquirer: Next, place more focus on the Gulf Coast

Courtland Milloy, Washington Post: D.C.'s Compassion Stretches Only So Far

Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Many refuse to give up on city

Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: No prayers for the dead in New Orleans

Renee Mitchell, Portland Oregonian: Folks wrap up early Christmas for evacuees

Askia Muhammad, Washington Informer: Katrina The Terrorist and her Sponsor

Ruben Navarrette, San Diego Union Tribune: A blemish on his record

Terry M. Neal, washingtonpost.com: Hiding Bodies Won't Hide the Truth

Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: How to bring all of that mojo back to New Orleans

Les Payne, Newsday: Our modern-day 'Grapes of Wrath'

Steve Penn, Kansas City Star: Performer's 'Hurricane' was a help

Ken Parish Perkins, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: When the subject turns to race, tempers flare, spittle flies and civility goes on holiday

David D. Porter, Orlando Sentinel: Katrina exposes our vulnerability to chaos

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Cleaning up a town begins with a broom

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Journey shows nature's strength and our own

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Reassurance rings hollow, and questions loom

Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: A poor excuse for inaction

Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: TV makes the horror real

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: It's the Feds' Job

Cindy Rodriguez, Denver Post: After N.O., jobs and uncertainty

Ken Rodriguez, San Antonio Express-News: Where's the cash? Many evacuees still await financial assistance

Albor Ruiz, New York Daily News: Welcome aid from all, Bush

Anthony Asadullah Samad, The Black World Today: America Got Us Lookin’ “Real Crazy” Right Now

Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: The moral to the New Orleans story

Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Community support drives away despair

Stan Simpson, Hartford Courant: Hartford's Rajun Cajun Heads Home

Michelle Singletary, Washington Post: Lessons to Carry Away From Katrina

Cheryl Smith, Dallas Weekly: One African American Woman's Opinion

Elmer Smith, Philadelphia Daily News: A Call to New Orleans

Gregory Stanford, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Poverty a storm that batters the poor every day

Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Why many fear the other flood — black crime

Esther Wu, Dallas Morning News: Gulf Coast region rich with Asian-American history

What about the people?

2005-09-10T22:43:00.000-05:00

Bryan Monroe/Knight Ridder
Arnold Blackstone "rescued" 30 pounds of meat he found in the freezer of a store that had been partially gutted by the storm. He then brought the meat back to the shelter and "cooked it right up" on a temporary barbeque near the outside wall of the gym.

I am just returning from South Mississippi, covering the worst of Hurricane Katrina at the point where her full force slammed the coast directly over Biloxi and Gulfport.

The devastation there was beyond words. Homes were crushed as the waters rushed in. Massive waterfront casinos were tossed aside by the winds and the waves, lifted from their beachfront moorings and moved across the street as if they were children's toys.

And the people...

Hundreds wandered the streets of Biloxi, looking for loved ones. Hundreds more huddled in shelters and in the remains of their homes, without water, food, power or phone. The situation was desperate. People tended to do desperate things.

More >>

FEMA Needs to Tell People What It Intends for Their Homes

2005-09-10T20:54:00.000-05:00

I had a fairly thorough look through the FEMA website, and no where could I find any mention of any plans to tell people FEMA's intentions for their homes. There are instructions for registering a claim with FEMA, but it is not clear to me what FEMA does for you once your claim is registered. Is this simply a mechanism for receiving aid money? Or does their attention to your claim involve keeping you updated on whether they plan to tear down your neighborhood? Anyone know?

Over the weekend, a reader made what seemed to me a really good suggestion, though I didn't yet understand at the time how good a suggestion it was:

Please consider contacting the USGS to have updated satellite photos made available for New Orleans citizens, their families and friends - so that the conditions of their neighborhood can be evaluated from their distant locations while awaiting permission to return home. This may take weeks. It would put many minds at ease (or make the worst known, not better, but less harsh than the wait to see it firsthand).

Make it so, Kathryn. Use what contacts and influence you have to make this idea understood as an important technical tool and its use as a social service.

This will also help FEMA recovery efforts.

There aren't enough satellite and aerial images publicly available to accomplish what he suggests. But the general idea, that the US government needs to provide people information about their homes, is a good one.

Clearly, some of the houses are a total loss and need to be torn down. On some portions of satellite images houses formerly aligned in neat rows now look like they were casually dropped and haven't been lined up yet. Those homes are gone. There is no question that they need to be replaced. But many others, some in quite deep water, may well be reparable. The question is this: How much of New Orleans does FEMA plan to restore, and how much does it plan to simply replace. And if the houses are replaced with something else, are they to be replaced for their original owners? Or will the land be taken by eminent domain and redistributed?

One thing I did find on the FEMA site was a news release detailing the FEMA time-line for federal funding of "debris removal":

State and local governments will be reimbursed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency for 100 percent of Hurricane Katrina eligible debris removal costs incurred during the sixty days following President Bush’s federal disaster declaration, from August 29 through October 30th, 2005.

Examples of eligible clean-up include removal of debris from public rights-of-way to ensure safe passage and debris removal from public property to eliminate health and safety hazards.

Removing the massive debris left by Hurricane Katrina is a cooperative effort between local communities, state governments, federal governments, and state and federal agencies.

It's not clear to me whether this time-line applies (or even could be applied) to the cleanup of New Orleans. But now that Michael Brown is out of the way, presumably some plan for the future of New Orleans is coming together.

Whole neighborhoods will need to be torn down entirely. We know this. It's obvious from up there in orbit where Digital Globes satellites live. But how many neighborhoods? And who will decide? Will FEMA tell you in advance if your house is to be razed, or only after the fact? FEMA needs to make its plans public as soon as possible.

The data tying specific New Orleans addresses to GPS coordinates and aerial and satellite images exists. I've been using it all week. FEMA needs to provide us with their overlay for the map of New Orleans before they start the bulldozers. My personal recommendation to whomever is now in charge of the restoration of New Orleans is that as soon as they have a map showing what areas of the city the plan to tear down, that they release it to the public and to the media so that it can be integrated into the same tools the public has been using to check on the storm damage to their homes. Specifically, I would like to see a publicly published map that could then be integrated into the Google Maps and Google Earth interfaces. Also, FEMA should license this same technology, for use on its own website, to create an Internet site where people can type in their addresses and receive a detailed report on what FEMA plans for the area.

If FEMA goes in with the bulldozers and starts razing areas without either informing the property owners and residents, nor allowing them back in to get their possessions, there will be mass panic. I hope that whoever takes over for Michael Brown has the sense to do better than that.

UPDATE: For those certain that what I'm describing just isn't FEMA's job, Josh Marshall explains how, now that FEMA has screwed up, they've had their mandate expanded to include administering reconstruction:

Fully $50 billion of those recovery and reconstruction funds passed by Congress today are going to FEMA. FEMA is going to administer those funds. That is just friggin' crazy.

Even if FEMA were still a model government agency, as it was by most accounts in the 1990s, this would still be a really, really bad decision. As the title says, FEMA is an emergency management agency, not a reconstruction agency. It doesn't have the organizational structure or competence to run the economy of a significant chunk of the United States for the foreseeable future, which is what this amounts to. . . .

And all that of course would all apply if FEMA were a well-run agency. But obviously, it's not. It's currently run by a crew of political hacks. The agency itself -- if its recent performance is any example -- is in deep disarray. It's become thoroughly politicized. And there are already very credible claims that it has used its disaster relief funds to advance narrowly political agendas. And then add on top of that what we've seen this administration do with the contracting mess in Iraq. Contracting cronyism defines this administration. And we're giving $50 billion to one of its most cronyfied outposts.

This is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen, a truly terrible idea.

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From one Katrina survivor: 'Refugee' fits

2005-09-08T22:22:00.000-05:00

SOMEWHERE IN LOUISIANA--I am a refugee. As someone who had to flee her city in the face of an oncoming, terrifying Hurricane Katrina, that humbling realization came after church last Sunday.

A nice man and his wife overheard me telling friends I didn't know what I was going to do next. He introduced himself, handed me a blue business card and said, "I'm a Vietnam vet. My wife and I have an extra bedroom. It's not fancy but you can stay, free."

I am a middle class, middle age, well-educated, well-traveled journalist. But he saw only my immediate past. If you are from New Orleans or the Gulf Coast, everyone around here knows you are one of this country's newest of refugees.

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Black college students hit by Katrina get help

2005-09-07T19:33:00.000-05:00

More than 9,100 university and college students throughout the Gulf Coast region are expected to get additional help through relocation to other schools and other aid, according to National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, which distributed this news release. (222kb, Requires Microsoft Word)

Meantime, Texas Southern University (TSU) opened its doors to more than 400 students from regions affected by Hurricane Katrina and catastrophic floods.
More information »

Black College Wire captures students' stories

2005-09-06T00:33:00.000-05:00

from Jean Thompson, Editorial Consultant, Black College Wire

"I'd like to bring to your attention the hard work of many of our student journalists, who have begun to cover the devastation of Katrina and the impact on our HBCUs.

"NABJ partner program Black College Wire has begun running student-produced enterprise coverage, and some of these stories have been told nowhere else.

"When some of the national media was reporting it could not find the president of Xavier, our students had located him through contacts and obtained a quote.

"While national media by and large failed to report that 460 students were trapped at Xavier days after the storm, our students were text-messaging each other and students' families. We were on the scene at Southern and Grambling when the students arrived, safe at last, on Friday.

"Is there disparity in coverage: Oh, yes. I noticed that a NYTimes map of New Orleans last week showed the location of Tulane's campus, which was EMPTY, during the time that the Xavier campus was full of students trapped in the upper floors of dorms. Xavier wasn't even shown on the map.

"Also: The fate of the Black Press in the Gulf region hasn't been covered: Someone should be writing this. Who will tell our stories from our perspective?

"Many of our student journalists from the region have lost everything they had at school, including at least one of the students who was working on the NABJ Monitor staff during our recent convention, Shawnee McFarland of Dillard.

"I know they are among thousands and thousands of victims, but we should give them our attention, and make sure that all NABJ members are aware of the fates of the HBCU student newspapers and journalism programs affected, including those at Dillard and Xavier.

"But also: I want NABJ members to know about the terrific reponse from other student newspapers, including those at Grambling, Southern and Jackson State. They are covering what's happening to their peers and telling their own stories.

"In addition, our student freelancers are at work producing stories for the Black College Wire, www.blackcollegewire.org. Please spread the word."

Consider it done...bkm

Has race/class angle been underreported?

2005-09-06T00:21:00.000-05:00

Slate's Jack Shafer thinks so.

“Now, don't get me wrong. Just because 67 percent of New Orleans residents are black, I don't expect CNN to rename the storm "Hurricane" Carter in honor of the black boxer,” Shafer writes. “Just because Katrina's next stop after destroying coastal Mississippi was counties that are 25 percent to 86 percent African-American (according to this U.S. Census map), and 27.9 percent of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line, I don't expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the news channels to give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat freshness into the endless loops of disaster footage that have been running all day, broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all the visible people left behind in New Orleans are of the black persuasion, and mostly poor."

Shafer continues: “I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to replace them,” Shafer writes. “No insurance, no stable, large extended family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to return to after the storm.”

Check out EURweb for their take.

'Please help me.' Dallas member looking for father

2005-09-06T00:06:00.000-05:00

This is from a member in the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators.

Dear Friends of the media and other social outlets:

I really need your help, please. My father is missing in New Orleans, LA. amongst the devastation. My daddy's name is George Sims, Sr. He is 63 years old.

His home is near the Industrial Canal where the levee broke. He lived at 4918
N. Johnson Street, closer to the canal than Tennessee street which was reported to the media when the break occurred.

My dad has a bullet in his head and is on medication. Without the medication,
he will have a seizure.

When I last spoke to him, he told me that a friend of his, Justin Taylor with
the Army National Guard, promised that he would come and get him if they had to evacuate the area. I'd be grateful if you could find the serviceman. I tried to call the Army National Guard in TX, but was unsuccessful.

I have a host of cousins, nieces and nephews, anuts and uncles who are down
there in the trenches of New Orleans.

I appreciate whatever help you can give me at this time. Perhaps someone on the news team can send word.

I contacted the Red Cross, and he is on their list; I was told that they would call me when he is found. That was the evening the hurricane struck. I have not heard anything since.

This is hell, and I am in purgatory...I need to know something, please help me. When he is found, perhaps we can try to get him to Zachary, LA where Donald Lee is. I can pick him up from there. I believe in God that he is alive and well.

Thank you so much and God bless you.

My home number is 972-641-7892, my cell number is 972-343-8372. Thank you for reading, thank you for your assistance.

Zahira Sims

Xavier students evacuated

2005-09-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

From Warren Bell, Jr., Associate V.P./University & Media Relations at Xavier University:

As of this afternoon, ALL dormitory students who were unable to evacuate before the storm, along with university staff who stayed with them, have already been safely removed from the campus and relocated to a staging area next to the campus. They remain under the protection of campus police, as well as members of the New Orleans Police Department.

The students and staff members are scheduled to be transported in buses this evening either to the Southern University main campus in Baton Rouge, LA, or further north to Grambling State University in Grambling, LA.

For more information, go to Xavier's Emergency Web Site.

Editorials on Katrina

2005-09-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

From the AP (thanks Russell LaCour)...

Nation's newspapers editorialize on the Katrina disaster, federal response

New Orleans Times-Picayune, Sept. 4.
Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right.³
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism. ...
Despite the cityµs multiple points of entry, our nationµs bureaucrats spent days after last weekµs hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the cityµs stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies. ...
Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadnµt known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, ²Weµve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that theyµve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day.³
Lies donµt get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.
Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."
That's unbelievable.
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. Weµre no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, Sept. 4
If the government canµt respond effectively to a natural disaster visible days ahead on the weather radar, what faith can Americans have that it is poised to respond to another
major terrorist attack? ...
The nation needs to know: If the Katrina response is indicative of how well-prepared FEMA is for the inevitable, what is it going to do in the event of the unexpected?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 4
Shame on the public officials who reacted slowly to the cries for help from New Orleans. Shame on the criminals wandering the streets, preying on the poor and helpless. Shame on those who didnµt heed the warnings about the vulnerability of New Orleans.
Shame on all of us.
The people of New Orleans, many of them lacking the wherewithal to evacuate on their own, were left stranded without enough food or water to survive. For days, their pitiful pleas largely went unanswered.
By midweek, bodies began piling up at the Superdome, while bloated corpses were seen floating down still-flooded city streets. How could this happen in the United States?

News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 5
Without delay, the system of levees built to "protect" New Orleans from flooding must be repaired, to return the water-stricken city to normality. But it's those very levees that set the city up for the one-two punch that started with Hurricane Katrina last weekend. The old saw that one shouldnµt try to bamboozle Mother Nature proved true again. Sadly for the communities that ring the Gulf of Mexico, Katrinaµs rains and the breached levees will wash tons of chemicals, poisons and petroleum products into the Gulf. Itµs clear that national policy, in New Orleans and other low-lying coastal regions, needs to change.

The Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., Sept. 4
As horrendous as the death and devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was to the Gulf Coast, the impact was magnified by the incredibly slow and inept response of
government agencies at all levels to the disaster. Most glaring was the lack of leadership from the White House. At a time of national emergency, no public official offered a confident, reassuring message that help was on the way to victims and would be there soon. Thatµs because it wasn't. ...
It was as if no one in the White House bothered to look at the 24-hour TV footage of New Orleans drowning and the rest of the Gulf Coast flattened.

The Democrat & Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y., Sept. 3
And then the stunning, sickening realization: This is not another country. This is New Orleans. These are Americans left dead and dying in the street. For now, as Bush said, the job is to save lives and turn anarchy into order. The federal government must apply every measure of its expertise and logistical power to keep this tragedy from worsening. Support from the private sector and ordinary Americans is pouring in.
But the questions shouldn't fade as the post-storm crisis eases. How did this happen? And what must be done to ensure it never happens again?

New York Daily News, Sept. 5
"We will not allow bureaucracy to get in the way of saving lives," President Bush vowed, but bureaucracy has already done exactly that, and bureaucracy continues to lumber along blindly. Yesterday, for example, dozens of volunteer physicians from all over the country were cooling their heels in the Mississippi flood zone, come to donate their efforts and energies to the relief operations ' and were bogged down in utterly mindless Department of Health and Human Services red tape, unable to admit desperate moms and crying babies into their mobile infirmaries.
We will not allow bureaucracy to get in the way of saving lives. If the President means that, he will give a good swift kick to his clumsy federal machine and put into place professional mechanics who know how to make the thing work.

New York Post, Sept. 4
The sums needed to rebuild the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will be staggering. Surely, America, being America, will find some way to manage the job ' though it may take quite a few years.
It's too soon to start planning that process, of course, with flood waters still drowning New Orleans, and masses still in urgent need of immediate attention. But itµs not too soon to start thinking about these critical issues.
And showing due respect for the limits nature will impose, in the process.

The Tulsa (Okla.) World, Sept. 2
Citizens who did not evacuate the water-logged and wind-whipped city last weekend are out of patience. And who could blame them? For days, they have been without food, water and shelter, with many perched on rooftops or waiting on urban islands surrounded by fetid floodwater. ...
New Orleans and coastal areas of Mississippi and Alabama are suffering mightily. Americans elsewhere, already on edge about the effects of Hurricane Katrina and rising gasoline prices on the economy, have every right to be asking why help is not on the way.

Miami Herald, Sept. 3
By now everyone who has been glued to the television knows that the inundation of New Orleans was a disaster that had been predicted on computer models and in emergency practice drills for decades. Yet New Orleans and Louisiana officials were still underprepared. While the city offered free transport out of the area to poor residents once the evacuation order became mandatory Sunday, it isnµt likely that a lot of those who stayed understood what could happen if a 15-foot storm surge hit ' or if the lake breached the levees. But officials knew; they were in those practice drills.
Likewise, Congresses past and present and White House administrations of both parties have failed to deliver the funding needed to strengthen the levees against storms bigger than Category 3 and build anti-flooding structures to keep Lake Pontchartrain from overflowing into the city. The Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for the levees, has never received full funding from Congress or the White House to meet its mandate to protect New Orleans.

Citrus County (Fla.) Chronicle, Sept. 4
Clearly, individuals must also take responsibility for what is under their control. What will it take for people to take evacuation warnings seriously?
What is it about 175 mph winds that normal people just donµt understand? The warnings are communicated and the tragic stories are told and there is still an element of people who foolishly want to ride out the storm. Those who can get out
should get out and take someone who canµt afford to leave with them.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Sept. 3.
Whoµs to blame? Take your pick. Start with Mayor Ray Nagin, who angrily blames the federal government, but who mindlessly directed thousands of people to the Superdome and the convention center with no plan to get them out or even care for them. Gov. Kathleen Blanco also failed to anticipate the scope of a catastrophe that many people saw coming.
Where is the Federal Emergency Management Agency? The incompetence of FEMA director Michael Brown is on display again. The agency not only is failing miserably in New Orleans, but is refusing to help legitimate South Florida victims of the same storm after throwing away more than $30 million last year on relief for a storm that didnµt even hit the region.
And then there is President Bush, our minister of vacations. As early as last Sunday morning, the whole world knew a catastrophe was bearing down on the Gulf Coast. Yet our 'leader' remained at his Texas ranch, no doubt 'clearing brush.' On Tuesday, two days after the catastrophe was anticipated and one day after it actually occurred, Bush was in California, strumming a guitar to celebrate the 60th anniversary of V-J Day.

The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, Sept. 3
Washingtonµs snail-like response to the collapse of New Orleans indicates that giving the Department of Homeland Security control over national disasters has itself been a disaster. Granted, the breaching of the levees after the hurricane caught everyone off guard. But the prospect of a major hurricane swamping the city was well-known. And it's now clear the federal emergency officials were either woefully unprepared or have bungled the relief effort. ...
Agencies are most effective when their focus is narrow. Homeland Securityµs priority is rightly terrorism attacks, not natural disasters. Giving FEMA a secondary role has proved a horrible mistake. President Bush should learn from this debacle and quickly restore FEMA's separate charge.

The Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Sept. 3
It is estimated that nearly a quarter of New Orleans residents have no transportation. For these people, a mandatory evacuation order, which was issued Sunday, is meaningless. How were these people supposed to leave the city? Where were they supposed to go? Leaving behind a home to likely be consumed by floodwater or flattened by the wind is hard for anyone. But, middle-class families can load into their car, head away and pay for food, lodging and other necessities with their credit cards. For thousands of poor in New Orleans, this was not an option.
Why were hundreds of buses not mobilized to move the poor, elderly and sick out of the city? Why were temporary shelters ' even simple military tents ' not set up on dry land around the city? With hurricane season just begun, these are not merely
retrospective questions.

The Washington Post, Sept. 5
Some glimmers of good news are finally beginning to emerge from the rubble and despair of New Orleans and the other areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. But the infuriating, unmistakable and unnerving lesson of the continuing tragedy is the fundamental failure of government at all levels to protect its citizens, the most vulnerable chief among them. Granted, the ²ultra-catastrophe³ of Katrina, as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff put it ' the devastation of an entire city, its communications, power, transportation and other infrastructure; the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people ' is beyond anything the nation has ever dealt with. Still, coming four years and tens of billions of dollars in preparedness spending after the Sept. 11 attacks, it suggests that the countryµs readiness to cope with a major disaster is woefully lacking.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sept. 3
As people in Wisconsin and elsewhere step forward to help those in need, there is still room to ask necessary questions. Indeed, itµs vital.
"The results are not acceptable," President Bush admitted on Friday. He's right, but why was that? And what does it say for the nationµs ability to cope with this and other disasters?
Bush most of all needs to answer those questions. Hereµs why.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- someone with whom we
don't often find ourselves in agreement -- asked the right question: "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the gulf for days, then why do we think weµre prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"
Gingrich is wrong about one thing, though. Officials -- federal, state and local -- didn't have just days of warning. They had years of warning.

The Modesto (Calif.) Bee, Sept. 4
That the overwhelming majority of those left to face this storm were black is a bleak testament to the nature of poverty in America. Who can blame people of color for seeing racism when they look at the frantic faces of people begging from sidewalks in New Orleans? ...
The Department of Homeland Security was created after Sept. 11. It absorbed, and some say weakened, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Four years later, with plenty of warning, the department failed in its first major test. This experience does not inspire the confidence of Americans anywhere.

Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, Sept. 3
On Friday, before he left to tour the Gulf Coast, President George W. Bush said that Washingtonµs response to Hurricane Katrina was "not acceptable."
It was the least the president needed to say. Too much went wrong in the first days after the disaster for anyone to pretend that the federal government has been at its best.
There are explanations -- some of them reasonable -- about why the relief effort was hampered. ...
President Bush can reach out and talk about all the help thatµs coming, but many reasonable people still are going to be appalled that help wasnµt better organized and quicker to come.
Lives surely have been lost as a result.

Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, Sept. 4
It's said that when everyone is to blame, no one is to blame. But few individuals and agencies, including President Bush, were particularly inspiring in the first few days of the crisis.
Corrupt and inefficient federal, state and local governments, flawed disaster planning, hesitation and a prior neglect of the Mississippi River levees contributed to the damage and loss of life.
If the various levels of government canµt do any better than this on a predictable natural disaster, and if individuals are as undependable in an emergency as these, an even more troubling issue arises: What confidence can Americans reasonably have about their ability to deal with a genuine ²homeland security³ disaster?

Republican-American, Waterbury, Conn., Sept. 3
Our Aug. 31 editorial "Is New Orleans worth reclaiming?" has drawn many angry retorts and a handful of compliments from Connecticut readers and from places as far-flung as Chicago, Texas and New Orleans itself.
We said Louisiana and the nation should consider alternatives to reconstruction, given that experts have been warning for years that it was just a matter of time until New Orleans was inundated. Many scientists warn of rising sea levels and fiercer storms. New Orleans is sinking, and itµs surrounded by water that is kept at bay by levees. We advocated measuring the risks and rewards of reconstruction in this context, not on the basis of emotion.
We regret having articulated this position when we did.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who expressed a similar point of view the day after the editorial appeared, undoubtedly feels the same way. Had we foreseen the failure of state and federal relief efforts that have contributed to a level of human suffering well outside the experience of most Americans, we would have saved the editorial for another day.

St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Sept. 3
There have been many individual acts of heroism, and the National Guard finally arrived on Friday with a large convoy of trucks with food. Eventually, order will be restored, but it took too long and allowed too much suffering. When it counted, no one was in charge of rescuing New Orleans from a predictable fate. Not the mayor, not the governor, not the engineering experts or the agencies created to answer such calls for help.
Not even the president of the United States rushed to take charge of this tragedy, and that is a pitiful state of affairs.

English-only hurricane evac orders?

2005-09-04T08:56:00.000-05:00

Vietnamese immigrant Chien Bui stands before his home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, Mississippi. Bui and wife Nhiem Pham lost everything in their house (AFP/Stan Honda)

NABJ President Bryan Monroe told the BBC in London last night that some Vietnamese immigrants who did not speak English did not understand evacuation orders to leave before Hurricane Katrina hit last Monday.

The BBC quickly zeroed in on that comment to ask if the racial divide in America was exposed by the disaster for all the world to see.

Listen to Monroe's interview online now (requires QuickTime or RealMedia player).

Blacks "looters," whites "victims"?

2005-09-03T08:58:00.000-05:00

From California to Germany, some are noticing the way the news media portrayed those taking things from stores in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Indeed, the controversy grew so great that Yahoo! News removed at least one of the photos.

Salon magazine was among the first to raise the issue. Way to go, Salon.

So, why aren't editors asking harder questions about race and class in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster?

Reporting Katrina

2005-09-02T22:36:00.000-05:00

The Center for Excellence in Journalism is offering analysis and examples of coverage of Hurricane Katrina.Take a look here.

NABJ prez in Mississippi

2005-09-02T21:55:00.000-05:00

NABJ President Bryan Monroe in Biloxi, Miss., covering the aftermath of Katrina.

2005-09-02T21:52:00.000-05:00

A CNN crew in Biloxi, Miss., is among hundreds of journalists risking their lives amid the chaos of the disaster from Hurricane Katrina.

NABJ President Bryan Monroe also is on the scene.

NABJ Webmaster

2005-09-02T09:07:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the new NABJ Forums Blog!

Please feel free to add your comments.

This blog is primarily intended to help those journalists caught in the wake of Hurricane Katrina get the word out abou their jobs, their stories, their families and other loved ones.

We will be updating and improving this blog throughout the day and weekend.

If you need to get something posted here right away, send an e-mail to the NABJ Webmaster