The association has collected over $106,000 in charitable contributions since the effort to raise money for Gambit Weekly employees was announced on Sept. 2. A second payment of $1,000 was wired yesterday to each of those employees, who were evacuated from their homes and left without jobs or income after Hurricane Katrina struck. Most of the money raised has come from AAN-member papers and their employees, although contributions began to trickle in last week from readers as well.
In an entry in his MSNBC blog on Monday, network newsman Brian Williams called Part 4 of Michael Tisserand's AAN-commissioned series on the evacuee experience, "a fine piece of journalism" and a "sobering and instructive piece of writing." Speaking of the displaced Gambit Weekly editor, in addition to producing fine journalism, he and some of his former neighbors recently started a new school for their children in New Iberia, La. In case you missed it yesterday on CBS' The Early Show, you can read about the Sugar Cane Academy here.
Newly named AAN assistant editor Shala Carlson (pictured), who was serving as Gambit Weekly's managing editor prior to Hurricane Katrina, has decided to return to Louisiana. "I think I just acted too quickly," Carlson says. "I believed I was ready to make a move, but I didn't anticipate how much I need friends and family and familiarity right now." AAN posted a help-wanted ad today for the newly reopened position.
As the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina continue to unfold, blogs the Web over are turning to the discussion of what exactly went wrong in those crucial early hours. The 2004 AAN-sponsored FEMA disaster story appears often. Most notably, Eschaton and Washington Monthly have linked to the story and the Sept. 7 follow-up published on altweeklies.com, both written by Jon Elliston of the Independent Weekly. In addition, a Louisiana-specific report written by Gambit Weekly staffer Eileen Loh-Harrist shows up on Talking Points Memo.
Twenty-five of the 43 AAN publishers who responded to a survey on Friday afternoon said they were interested in running house ads promoting the Gambit Relief Fund. So AAN asked Katherine Topaz of Topaz Design to create a quarter-page vertical ad (the size preferred by 78 percent of the respondents) that could be easily adapted by AAN members for use in their own papers. Kat ended up designing three of them, and they are now available for download from this page in the AAN Resource Library. An even larger majority of respondents said they were interested in running ads directing reader contributions to general Katrina-relief organizations sanctioned by AAN, so another set of quarter-page ads will be created once the association identifies general relief funds that make sense for its members.
Every Gambit Weekly staff member we've communicated with since the Gambit Relief Fund was announced has offered their heartfelt appreciation, but we were especially touched by this message we received last week from special sections editor Kandace Power Graves, who has relocated to Northwest Arkansas with her two children.
Michael Tisserand (pictured at left, with family) this week launched a series of weekly columns available to all AAN-member papers that will focus on the evacuee experience in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "Although the voice of these pieces will be personal," says Tisserand, "this is going to be a heavily reported column seeking to give specific voice to the general evacuee population." The 2,000-word columns will be available free of charge each Monday to member papers for use in their pages or on their Web sites.
Forty-nine employees of the besieged New Orleans paper will each receive an initial gift of $1,000 this week from AAN's Gambit Relief Fund. Although the Fund has already collected over $52,000 in contributions, AAN will continue to seek additional financial assistance for Gambit staffers, with the goal of raising enough money to help them through the next two or three months. New Times and Village Voice employees, whose parent companies have both aggressively promoted a matching-funds program, make up a large percentage of the individual contributions received in the first week since the fund was announced.
When the order to evacuate came, Gambit Weekly staff writer Katy Reckdahl had to decide which would be worse: staying in New Orleans for the storm or delivering her first child in a car on the evacuation route. She stayed. Here is her account of her son's first days at Touro Infirmary and her family's eventual escape from the city.
