I'm always looking for good examples of "citizen journalism," and my Poynter colleague
Larry Larsen delivered with
this link to a story by two paramedics about their experiences in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Visiting the city from San Francisco for an emergency medical services convention,
Larry Bradshaw and
Lorrie Beth Slonsky write a powerful tale of being with a group of hopeful evacuees trying to escape New Orleans -- but being thwarted by emergency and law-enforcement officials intent on keeping them out of overflowing evacuation centers and from entering a non-flooded neighboring community, and refusing them water or food.
They write: "We also suspect the media will have been inundated with 'hero' images of the National Guard, the troops, and police struggling to help the 'victims' of the hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans." They paint an extremely unflattering picture of their group's encounters with law-enforcement officials, suggesting that "the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist."
These citizen accounts of the chaos of New Orleans -- with many more sure to come out as hurricane victims begin to find temporary or new homes and are able to tell their personal stories -- will present a better picture of what really happened in the days after the city flooded. I suspect that through such "victim journalism," in the weeks and months ahead we will learn things that traditional journalists either ignored or were ignorant of.
