My birthplace, Biloxi, Mississippi suffered a major hit from Hurricane Katrina. Plenty of folks lost everything there. But it seems the system in that state has been handling the situation in ... well, a systematic way. So the media's main focus has been on New Orleans, where the devastation is wider and the human and economic loss is so much greater.
It's been hard to focus on normal daily routines for the past ten days. As a longtime Internet junkie, my tendency has been to rely on alternative sites, such as the Interdictor blog and craigslist new orleans, for updated news and commentary on Katrina-related issues.
Surfing the local newspapers and television stations has also proved fruitful; the closer you get to the folks who are on the ground, the more you hear a story that's different from the one you hear in the mainstream media.
This points out the clear advantage of having Internet access and knowing how to look beyond Yahoo! News. It's more important than ever to make sure young people have access to the Internet and to teach them how to search for independent information, to look beneath the surface of stories they see on TV.
Having said that, I'll add that the major newspapers--those with real writers, not the ones that merely provide column inches to pad the ads--can play a vital role in expressing national outrage, sometimes with eloquence. Here's a story filled with images of tragic irony: Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street - New York Times (requires registration).
[Update: The NYTimes article has been archived and is now only available if you purchase it.]
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