By Roy Peter Clark
Vice President, Senior Scholar and Reporting, Writing & Editing Faculty
Sense Memories: Recalling the Stories They Told in the Storms
By Jill Geisler
After Katrina, Seeing Still is not Understanding
By Kenny Irby
Scattered inland is the destruction of a nuclear holocaust, so complete and expansive it defies metaphor. Single images stand out: the Golden Arches of McDonald’s collapsed like a melted Dali watch; an American flag more tattered than the Star Spangled Banner; a stand of ancient oak trees snapped and splintered; graffiti painted on an abandoned seaside mansion: You Loot, We Shoot; a flight of concrete steps leading to nowhere.
We stopped at what is left of St. Paul’s Catholic Church and School in Pass Christian. My Poynter colleague Kelly McBride and I belong to a St. Paul’s Parish in St. Petersburg. The pastor of our church, Fr. Robert Gibbons, had extended a helping hand to his counterpart in Mississippi. I walked into the skeleton of the old church, peered through the surviving stained glass, rested my hand atop the altar stones. Outside I found a small yellow stuffed bear, face down in the mud, beside what had been a makeshift shrine. Did a child leave it here? I picked up the bear, brushed the dirt out of its fur, and put it in my pocket. I named him Buddy after my companion Buddy Martin, the editor of the Charlotte Sun, the newspaper in Punta Gorda, Fl. the town torn apart by the buzzsaw of Hurricane Charley. Buddy the Bear will be delivered to our pastor to share with the children in St. Petersburg.
The poorest state in the Union suddenly looks poorer, but not in spirit. That’s my impression from spending the weekend working with more than a dozen journalists whose personal and professional lives have been torn asunder by the effects of the hurricane. Here’s what I think I learned from them:
· Journalists need physical and moral courage to fulfill their duty to the public.
· On certain big stories, journalists are part of the public, and should not be held to the same standards of neutrality imposed in calm weather.
· To do their work, journalists need special support, from the companies that own them, from their colleagues, from the profession, and from the public.
· Members of the public may hug whoever delivers their paper in a storm, worth remembering as we sound the death knell for print.
· After a storm, watchdog journalism is more important than ever. (Think FEMA or the Red Cross, or State Farm Insurance).
· Timing is everything. News judgment after a storm means planning for immediate coverage, but also for the stories of loss and rebirth that will come down the road, months and years after the event. The editor must know when to print stories of grief, but without instilling compassion fatigue.
· A rousing version of “Proud Mary” can lift the spirits, even under the most trying circumstances.
· We all owe the residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast the duty of remembering how much they have suffered and how much they need us and how much we need them – especially when so much of the coverage has shone on New Orleans.
Finally, I learned that the citizens in and around Biloxi are lucky to have Stan Tiner as editor of the Sun Herald. The paper is owned by Knight Ridder, whose own future lies under a storm cloud. Stan is a big Southern boy, who admits that everyone in Mississippi owns two things: “a chain saw and a gun.” I saw tears roll down the cheeks of this bear of a man as he remembered the events of the past and helped his staff imagine a more hopeful future.
