AFTER THE STORM

The major hurricanes of 2005--Katrina and Rita--have been enormously challenging to cover (background links are available here). Journalists, some of whom lost their own homes, faced difficult working conditions and saw horrors that affected them deeply. (Read some of their stories, and see how you can help.)

For the AP's Martha Mendoza, Katrina opened a window for journalists to write "the bigger stories" about race, class, history, migration and poverty. "The theme that I use in a lot of my reporting is giving voice to the voiceless, and Katrina has allowed a lot of these voices to be heard," she said.

Mendoza and other journalists offered their insights and suggestions for future coverage at a September 2005 conference sponsored by the Institute for Justice and Journalism at USC-Annenberg, "Race, Class and Katrina." Many of the story ideas they discussed can be found and told not just along the Gulf Coast but in communities across the country.

Follow communities. Gay men from New Orleans went directly to the gay bars in Houston to find help, Mendoza said. The Vietnamese community took in their own people, leading to some cross cultural confusion when those evacuees refused to move to Red Cross shelters. And the diaspora is becoming international. Most of the 100,000 Hispanics in New Orleans were Hondurans, and tens of thousands of people are now heading home to Honduras.

Seek other angles. Mendoza suggests reading the Army Times. The paper profiled National Guardsman going into New Orleans, saying "This is going to be like Somalia." Could that attitude have affected the recovery efforts? Another good source of story ideas is the Social Science Research Council's new page, Understanding Katrina, where researchers and scholars weigh in with their perspective on the disaster.

Make comparisons. Look at what happened after previous hurricanes in Florida to see if race was a factor there. Ask what might have been different if the $100 billion being spent now on recovery had been spent before Katrina, not just on building levees but on some of the problems of poverty. What would the damage have been then?

Find parallel stories in your own community. Are low-lying areas protected from flooding or in jeopardy in your region? Who lives in those areas? What about your own local version of "cancer alley?" "Look at the most toxic areas in your community," Mendoza said. "I guarantee you will find poor and black people living there."

Watch your language. NABJ cautioned journalists not to use the term "refugees" to describe people displaced by the storms. The term refugee has political implications and also suggests that someone cannot return where they came from. Besides, said NABJ president Bryan Monroe of Knight Ridder, the victims themselves objected to the use of the term. "If people don't want you to call them something, don't call them that," Monroe said.

He urged reporters not to be afraid to go outside their comfort zone to look for stories. "Ultimately, they're richer. They tell you so much more about your own community and your society... There's so much more to life in these communities if you just go and look."