Community High School

Reporting on Katrina

The Times-Picayune newsroom was bursting with nervous excitement and energy, but when reporter Mark Schleifstein answered the phone at 4:00 pm, uneasiness settled in.

“Mark, I have to ask you a question. How high is your building? What kinds of wind can it withstand?” said the weather forecaster on the line.

“Why are you asking me these questions?” Shleifstein replied as the staff listened in.

“You know why I’m asking you these questions,” the forecaster answered. “This is the big storm that’s going to destroy New Orleans.”

And just like that, the news story of Hurricane Katrina, scheduled to make landfall the following day, became a story about the writers.

Besides following a dynamic hurricane and writing about its repercussions, Schleifstein and staff had to worry about accommodations for their own family members. Many relatives did not want to evacuate and separate from relatives on staff, and so the Times-Picayune building filled up with men, women, children, workers, babies and even elderly in wheelchairs.

Schleifstein ignored the distractions and updated his online blog as much as he could while fielding calls from other news organizations that wanted information.

However, the Times-Picayune building could not be spared from the flooding.

“When we woke up [Tuesday morning] the water was three to four feet high next to our building,” Schleifstein said. In addition, rumors were circulating that prisoners had broken out of a nearby jail. The publishers and editors decided to evacuate.

After a brief period of time away from his desk, Schleifstein started reporting again. He wanted to know why the engineering of the levees did not work. He wanted to know what the effect of chemicals would be on those trapped in the floods. But ethics also came into play.

“Prior to the storm I said, ‘I can’t do that [story] because it is a conflict of interest. I can’t write the story ‘Why the Levees Flooded My House.’”

And yet, after the hurricane, “crazy decisions” were made.

One photojournalist, Ted Jackson, went out on assignment and found victims of the storm drowning from across a bridge.

One man of the drowning family yelled at Jackson to stop taking pictures, but he did not. He thought by photographing the chaos, he could motivate the public to act and help more victims.

“I have to take this picture; it’s what I do,” Jackson explained to the man over rushing water. “Look. When this storm is over, hopefully we can sit down over a cup of coffee.”

Schleifstein has made many ethical decisions himself involving catastrophic storms and New Orleans, as far back as 2002. He wanted to publish an environmental series called “Watching the Wave.” In the articles, Schleifstein revealed that the wetland buffer south of the city had disappeared, and that meant New Orleans was in grave danger.

“Myths built up that the levees could protect the city from a fast-moving category three storm. We found that new storm surge models were showing even a category two [storm] would put water in several parts of the city,” he said.

The editors did not want to publish the stories. They were worried that the series would scare the public unnecessarily.

Schleifstein convinced them otherwise.

“Disaster-porn is in the eye of the beholder,” he said, “I think all of these people would like to know there are no plans to get them out of the city in the event of a storm.”

The series was printed, but nothing came of it. Despite the warnings, the government was still unprepared when Katrina hit on August 29th, 2005, so the Times-Picayune competed with news organizations as big as the New York Times for stories that fell “in our own backyard.”

Schleifstein, who now shares three Pulitzer prizes with his staff in honor of the coverage, felt they accomplished that.

“We owned this story, and we knew it. We were representing our citizens in ways the media and politicians do not understand, and that was a great responsibility.”