February, 2009

Thursday through Tuesday is a blur. At any given point, there were an extra 12-17 people staying in the house. The many many parades can only be distinguished as either day or night. Miles of walking helped my ankle but led to an injury for someone else. We ate well, drank well but definitely didn’t sleep well.

I couldn’t completely cover all that happened in a post. To honor the Mardi Gras experience, I leave a few haikus.

Thursday
Preparing for guests,
anxious, restless, excited.
Hang green, purple, gold!

Friday
Circling the city
to find ruin, color, passion;
Parades and friends roll.

Saturday
Sleep three hours, parades
Nine squeeze into one sedan.
Oysters on their shells.

Sunday
Crawfish are ready:
Juicy and tender, tasty.
Suck juice from the heads

Sunday Night
Catch beads from Batman.
Feet soak up Bourbon Street breath -
Live jazz validates.

Lundi Gras
Tour broken N’Awlins,
Share turducken and sunshine.
Taste red beans, jazz, love.

Mardi Gras
6 a.m. wake up -
Bloody Marys trump coffee.
Bask in beads and rays.

Wednesday
What day is today?
Recover, reflect, renew:
Empty house silence.

“Perfect objectivity is an unattainable standard for journalists even in the best of times. Because nobody’s a robot, no journalist can be expected to write in a way that doesn’t reveal at least a little something about who that journalist is…

Objectivity became that much harder for local journalists after Hurricane Katrina. We who write the story of New Orleans after the flood are, for the most part, New Orleanians ourselves. We struggle in many of the same ways the subjects of our stories struggle. We need financial assistance to get into houses the same way they need it.

Do we care about how this story unfolds? Yes, and unashamedly so. Does that mean we can’t, that we shouldn’t, write about the things that are happening — or not happening? A complete recusal would feel like abandonment.

Somebody’s got to tell the world what’s going on here. If local journalists are not the most objective sources of the story, we should be considered the most authoritative. We know the pain of living here — not because we see it but because we feel it.

— Jarvis DeBerry, The Times-Picayune, September 30, 2007

Yesterday I met with editorial writer Jarvis DeBerry. After Katrina, his column focused on displaced New Orleanians. He started writing about his own application to The Road Home, the government program set up to compensate 150,000 homeowners in Louisiana with significant damage to their homes. He encountered red tape, confusion and conflicting information.

After several columns, he got a phone call saying his case had been expedited. There was a “note” in his file. Jarvis didn’t call any favors. It had to be because of the columns. Later he was told he received $90,000 more than the original valuation. He wondered if this was a move to shut him up. His girlfriend told him to take the money, but he couldn’t personally or professionally. He didn’t want to get entangled in any future traps and he couldn’t live with that money thinking that it could have belonged to one of the poor, old people he talked to. He tried to keep himself out his columns. When he used his story, it was to illustrate the struggles of thousands of people. He consciously wrote to make sure readers didn’t think he was writing to get anything out of it.

He never questioned writing about his own journey. He was the only columnist who lost his house. If he didn’t tell the story, who else would?

The word research strikes either fear, mystery or disinterest into non academics who hear it. Aware of this, I avoid using it or slur through an explanation of what the word means for my project. Watered down for mass consumption, my research project can be described: I’m interviewing reporters and editors at the paper about what it was like to report Hurricane Katrina while they were dealing with their own Katrina-induced problems.

Whoa. So you get to talk to Chris Rose? Yep. Jim Amoss? Yep. What are you going to ask them? (Breathe.) Well… some journalists strongly adhere to the idea that journalists should be extremely objective and keep their personal experiences and biases out of the reporting and writing process. Let the story stand on its own. If a reporter is a member of the local Kiwanis club, he can’t write about the upcoming pancake breakfast. When Katrina happened, every journalist was affected to some degree, so how did they report “objectively?” And how has that changed their newsroom in the last few years.

I’ve interviewed the executive editor and managing editor, and both have been terrific to talk to: insightful, articulate and helpful for thinking of questions to ask others as I go. I have two more interviews on Tuesday: one who reported during Katrina and is now an editor and another former reporter, turned columnist. Questions will focus more on individual stories and experiences than broad observations of how the newsroom has changed. Interviewing journalists is both inspiring and terrifying. Stories from the job are exciting for someone who wants to go into that line of work. On the other hand, these people aren’t new to interviews. What if I don’t ask the right questions? How embarrassing!

Shouting he phrase “Throw me something, mister!” will usually get you a strand or two of beads at a Mardi Gras parade. Saturday night’s Krewe du Vieux parade appreciated our twist on the famous saying.

Parades are sponsored by private clubs called krewes with each having a hierarchy of royalty and some sort of ball or soiree. Parades have floats, music and marchers. Participants throw or give away beads, cups, stuffed animals and other prizes as they roll through the streets.

Krewe du Vieux is one of the first to roll and it goes through the French Quarter and neighboring Marigny neighborhoods. The krewe adopts a political, satirical theme each year and sub-krewes do their best to present the theme in a fun, raunchy way.

This year’s theme: “Stimulus Package.” There were subkrewes promoting “stocks and bondage” and “sub-primal urges” and other cleverly named floats I can’t write because Google will pick them up and I’ll start getting porn traffic.

Uncle Sam getting flushed down the toilet

My booty for the evening included beads, roses, condoms and a prize throw: a gold painted walnut.

The regional representative from my university happened to be in town this week, and he asked me out for breakfast to touch base even though I don’t actually live here and am leaving in May. I’ve stayed pretty involved, so he didn’t have to convince me to donate or update me on the latest campus news.

Because of that, we talked mostly about what other alums are doing in the state and area. In other words, he fed me a steady stream of story ideas for an hour. Most are, understandably, doctors and professors in science fields. He laughed when I said journalists were a protected species in college. We found a home in a basement newspaper office with equipment and mustard-yellow couches from the ’70s while the bio and chem. people worked in high-tech libraries and labs.

I pitched a story about the musician to the editor of the alumni magazine and pointed out that there are hundreds of alums in the area, that there hasn’t been much coverage from the South and that he needs me to write. If that doesn’t work out, I can probably keep it local.

After breakfast, I went to a coffeeshop I like but rarely visit because it’s a drive. I had only been sitting down for five minutes when a girl set her computer down at the table next to me. Because she was so close, I looked over and stared. I knew this girl. We had met a few weeks earlier while out for a birthday celebration. We had talked for a while but I couldn’t remember her name. So I said, “Hey, I know you” and we caught up. We were both writing and self-editing, and it was comforting to be in the company of someone doing a similar thing. Most of my journalizing has been solitary: exploring the city, researching at the library, writing in coffeeshops.

This small city has a way of bringing people together. Need evidence?

• I spotted a girl from Rochester who graduated in ’08, standing on Magazine Street with a couple hundred other people
• At the St. Augustine’s service, the other visitors were a married couple from Kansas City.
• A friend I met while studying abroad in Spain (I went to UR, she went to MU). We ran into each other my first week at MU in the foreign language department. I hadn’t seen her in about a year when I literally bumped into her outside a bar on Frenchmen St. She was on vacation.
• Several people are visiting the city this semester, planned without knowing I was here: college friend visiting another, uncle has a work convention here next week, another college friend has a conference in April

My aunt is amazed at how popular I am. I am amazed at how magnetic I feel in this city.