Katrina Devastation: Can't Believe Eyes

[Kevin]

Editors at APME Tour Katrina Devastation: Can't Believe Eyes
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003316030

By Joe Strupp

Published: October 27, 2006 4:40 PM ET
NE ORLEANS For most newspaper editors, the story of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath has been told via correspondents in the field, or Associated Press dispatches, with little first-hand experience of the devastation.

This week, as part of the Associated Press Managing Editors conference here, dozens of newsroom leaders from around the country have gotten their first looks at the still-recovering areas -- from the shattered Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the storm-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast – via a series of bus tours sponsored by the Freedom Forum.

Utilizing the Newscapade coach bus, which former Gannett Chairman Al Neuharth made famous during his 2000 road tour to promote the Newseum exhibits, Freedom Forum hosts took groups of a dozen or so editors and others on four-hour tours each day this week through the most-damaged areas of southern Louisiana and Mississippi.

E&P tagged along on Friday’s tour, which for many in attendance was their first chance to look at the storm-ravaged areas that their newspapers have been covering for more than a year. With a heavy rain falling at some points, the tour took on a real storm-like image, offering at least a taste of what the mood must have been like on Aug. 29, 2005. One editor later said he was "totally blown away" by what he saw--pictures just don't do it justice.

“I’m not sure people as far away as we are have grasped how little has changed, that this much devastation is still here,” said Judith Ettenhofer, managing editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wis.

...

reality soon kicked in again as the group crossed the industrial canal bridge and, eventually, into the Lower Ninth Ward. Whole lots were empty, with just slabs of concrete where houses had been. On one spot, a wrought iron gate, mangled like a pretzel, is all that remains, while another lot has piles of debris.

“It is hard to process, a year later, that this was all a neighborhood,” said Rick Hall, managing editor for The Deseret News in Salt Lake City, who spoke while peering out the window to the Ninth Ward mess. “The magnitude of the destruction and the difficulty of rebuilding, I don’t know how you capture that.”

Vernon Smith, deputy foreign editor for the Dallas Morning News, watched from the coach’s rear windows, with his eyes fixed on the passing, empty scene. He said nothing he has seen in the news in the past year compared with the upfront visual. “All of the great photos that have been documenting the devastation just don’t do it justice,” he said. “Seeing it for my own eyes just takes my breath away. That so much devastation could befall a city. I am totally blown away. I have a much better appreciation for the challenge.”

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003316030

[Ed Ziomek]

I just read today in the NY Daily News, that the Bush presidential library may cost $500 million dollars.

Oh, and lets not forget that apparently several private residences will be torn down on the power of Eminent Domain. In all fairness, though, these funds are targeted to be raised by private funding...

http://www.nysun.com/article/27794 (February article of a lawsuit questioning the Eminent Domain ruling)...

Does anyone else cringe at the thought of building a $500 million dollar library, while Katrina residents ...whole populations of the former city, are still displaced?

Or...maybe the truth is that the new New Orleans city doesn't want the old city back?

This is another painful subject that I cannot figure out, certainly not responsible government in my eyes.

$500 million for a library???? ...their reason..."to protect the legacy of the Bush-2 presidency?!

[Kevin]

Cringing!

$500 million for a "library" for the least curious, most aggressively secretive presidency in recent history. Nice.

Now it just needs to be LEED certified.

[Richard Haut]

hey, Zane Grey wrote a lot of books.

this is the most wonderfully Surreal project - if form follows function, one can only wait in wonder to see what results.