Media Struggles To Cover Katrina

Journalists Work To Cover Devastation Despite Challenges

(CBS) 
The decision to move came after reporters had spent two nights in a newsroom with no air conditioning and a dying generator. The Internet has been the only available option for many media outlets in the region, and the Times-Picayune posted all of its coverage online when printing a paper edition became impossible.

"Things are so bad in the city that there are no ways to get copies of the paper to anyone anyway," Mark Schleifstein, an environmental reporter and hurricane expert who has become the Times-Picayune's spokesman, told the Los Angeles Times.

Baton Rouge's Advocate is also hosting Times-Picayune staffers, as well as reporters who have come to cover the story from as far away as Paris. Some, according to Editor and Publisher, arrived at the newspaper with children in tow.

The Sun Herald, in Biloxi, Miss., has kept publishing out of the offices of the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer, though some employees remain in the newspaper's powerless main building. It even managed to have 20,000 free copies of its hurricane coverage delivered into Biloxi, despite the fact that most roads have flooded.

New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL-TV, which has stayed on the air since the hurricane hit, has sent much of its staff to Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, where communications systems are barely functioning. Other local stations have provided coverage over the Internet, despite going off the air.

Despite the conditions, Felling says it would be impossible to get reporters to leave the region. "I couldn't pull these people out of there with a tank," he said. "Nobody wants out. Nobody wants relief. They know they're sitting on a moment of history."

Adds LeDuc: "I couldn't be prouder of work of our staff people. They're just performing brilliantly under terrible conditions, and without complaint."