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Long-Term CoverageOrleans, a front-page editorial saideveryone in FEMA should be fired.It’s tough to be part of the storyyou’re likely to be covering for therest of your time in New Orleans, butthat’s the post-Katrina reality. Despitethe edginess, our news coverage has remainedrigorously fair because we can’tlet it be otherwise. But it’s a constantstruggle, explained Mark Schleifstein,a Times-Picayune environmental reporterwho predicted in a 2002 seriesof articles the type of damage that astorm like Katrina could cause. “I haveto be careful about bias and think thingsthrough carefully to ensure that if mypersonal feelings might get into a story,I leave them out,” he said. His homein the Lakeview area had two feet ofwater—on its second floor.The struggle to maintain a sense ofbalance in our news reporting makesour job tougher, said Coleman Warner,a colleague of mine at the Times-Picayune who is rebuilding his family’shome near Lake Pontchartrain afterit drowned in eight-and-a-half feet ofwater. “It’s challenging in a differentkind of way professionally becauseyou want to maintain your journalisticprinciples and your dignity and yoursense of fairness in how you portraythings,” he told me. “All the standardingredients of good journalism arethere, but there’s an entirely differentdimension for us because we have adifferent insight into the manifestationsof this because we can see it. We cantouch it. We’re surrounded by it. We’reliving with it.”While reporting on these conditionsis stressful, Warner said that living in thesame sort of situation can give reportersa personal perspective on what theyhear others talk about. “When I interviewpeople who are trying to renovate,and they’re frustrated with Road Home(the housing relief program) or FEMA,I can immediately empathize with thatperson,” Warner said, “because thismorning, I woke up in a FEMA trailer.”Given this vantage point, “you can fillin the blanks about the way people canfeel things,” he said.Meshing Life and WorkAs we struggle to get back to normal,we stumble across circumstances thatmight lead to stories. For instance,after my wife and I returned to NewOrleans, we couldn’t find our generalpractitioner, and we knew that ourfiles at our eye doctor’s office hadbeen washed away. That led me tothink that other people must be in thesame situation and that I might be ableto put together a legitimate story thatcould be beneficial, too. After a lot ofcalling and Web surfing, I learned—tomy amazement—that doctors aren’trequired to tell their patients wherethey are. But I found several new Websites where doctors could let patientsknow of their whereabouts and, perhaps,their return dates. I did a storylisting these sites and their addressesand wrote about the feasibility of electronicmedical records.Alert reporters can spot these storieson every beat. Editors welcome them,not only because they help depict theway we live in post-Katrina New Orleansbut also because they offer a respitefrom somber tales of human miseryand bureaucratic sloth.Since the storm, The Times-Picayunehas become the principal news sourcein this part of the world. In the daysafter Katrina hit, our Web site 1 wasgetting up to 30-million hits a day,and people were using our electronicbulletin boards to find out how theirhomes had fared, where their relativeshad wound up and, indeed, whetherthey were alive.The push for Katrina-related storiescontinues, even for people whose beatshave nothing to do with flawed leveesor relief programs snarled in bureaucracy.It’s relentless, it’s tough, and it’sstressful. The stress was evident earlyon, when we were in Baton Rouge inthe days after the storm, bunking inmarried-student housing at LouisianaState University (LSU), when I sharedan apartment with 10 other men.We slept on mattresses and shared abathroom. Although we were deadtired from the work, we couldn’t stopwaking up in the middle of the nightto worry about the conditions we’dleft behind.I watched a colleague crack onenight; she was sent away to stay withrelatives. One of my roommates hadaging relatives and in-laws who hadlost their homes on the Mississippi GulfCoast. His wife, who had taken theirchildren to stay with friends severalhours away, was wondering whetherto enroll them in school there becausethere was no way to know when anyonewould be able to return. At four o’clockone morning, he awoke with stabbingchest pains and had to be rushed to ahospital. It wasn’t a heart attack, butit served as a warning of the toll stresscould take.As we worked side by side in BatonRouge—first at LSU, then in a windowlesssuite at a former shopping mall—we juggled work on stories with callsto family members and to contractorsand insurance agents. We were tryingto restore order to our own lives aswe were chronicling the chaos thathad befallen our city. Colleagues oftenhung up in tears. In a flash, someonewas always there to offer a hug andwords of support. Those gestureshelped a lot.When people were able to ventureback into New Orleans, they took picturesof their ruined homes to bolsterinsurance claims. The photos werealways horrible to behold, especiallyfor those of us who had visited theirhouses before Katrina. For example,the director of our news-art departmentowned a burgundy-colored leathersofa that had been her pride and joy,but in the photo she showed us, it waswhite with mold. At times like those,the camaraderie was vital.We cried, we hugged, and we keptworking. We had no choice. Besidesbeing what we were paid to do, ourwork—gathering facts and organizingthem into stories—was one thing wecould do to keep us focused—andreasonably sane.Stress continues to be a problem and1www.nola.comNieman Reports / Fall 2007 31