Fall Conference When: Friday, Oct. 28 Where: Campus Life Building, Room 100, Time: Program runs 9 a.m. to 11:45, with awards luncheon to follow in the Holmes Student Center’s Duke Ellington Ballroom. To register: Download a form. Deadline: Friday, Oct. 21 Cost: $60 for a newspaper’s first participant, $30 for each additional participant. Includes program and luncheon. Parking: Registrants may park in the Newman Center lot, just north of the Campus Life Building. Download a pass. |
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Three reports of newspapers' responses to Katrina
Editor’s note: This newsletter went to press on the eve of Hurricane Rita striking the Gulf Coast.
Galena Gazette reporter Amy Alderman is doing more than just writing about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She’s volunteered with the Red Cross as a relief worker. Alderman took a Red Cross course in Dubuque on Sept. 12, and was told it might be some time before she would be activated, if at all.
She didn’t have to wait long.
She received a phone call Tuesday, Sept. 20 and was told she would be heading to the Gulf Coast on Sunday the 25th. She could be doing any number of things as a relief worker, from being one of the people assessing individual family’s needs and handing out debit cards, to simply working in a soup kitchen.
Although the relief work comes first, she’s planning on filing reports and photos. She’ll presumably return the second week in October.- Jay Dickerson, Galena Gazette
A group of public works employees from the Davenport, Iowa, went to Bay St. Louis, Miss. to help with the cleanup and to restore sewer and water service. We sent a reporter and photographer with them to tell the stories from the scene and through the eyes of the local people who are down there.
Ther are others from our area working in New Orleans and elsewhere that we are in touch with as well and they will likely connect with and report on them given time. Staff were told to bring good shoes and waders, their own food and water and a sleeping bag ... they are prepared to live and sleep out of the back of a pickup truck with a topper on it, and have been. Stories to date have been mainly of devastation, incredible stories of loss and survival and ... on the part of local workers and others frustration.
Maps to the sewer and water systems were lost in the hurricane and manholes and shutoff valves are often buried under piles of debris. They are constantly changing flat tires on their vehicles, etc. Another group of firemen from Davenport, assigned to New Orleans, has been coming over to help because they say FEMA is so disorganized that they don’t have work for them to do and what they are assigned can be completed by noon. Police returning to town have related the same story.
These are many of the stories you’ve heard elsewhere, but telling it through the eyes of local people makes it a local story.
- Roger Ruthhart, Rock Island Argus
Daily Herald and Reflejos employees donated $10,145 for hurricane relief efforts through a companywide effort. Paddock Publications then matched the contribution for a total $20,290. In addition, the Daily Herald coordinated an effort to provide clothing to meet the immediate clothing needs of the people relocated by Hurricane Katrina to Elgin and Algonquin. We asked local sports teams and our partners at NBC5 in Chicago to help us in the donation effort.
- Colin O’Donnell, Daily Herald