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.
In this week's SF Weekly, New Times Media executive editor Michael Lacey (pictured) responds to a recent report in the San Francisco Bay Guardian about merger talks between his company and Village Voice Media. Lacey takes aim at Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann, calling the report "his latest salvo against New Times" and calling Brugmann himself much worse.
Shala Carlson will take over as the association's assistant editor next week, replacing Ryan Learmouth, whose last day at AAN is this Friday. Carlson has worked for the New Orleans alt-weekly since 1998, and before that served stints as an editor at the Times of Acadiana in Lafayette, La., and an administrator for a Louisiana-based nonprofit organization. She has been living with her parents in Opelousas, La., since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last weekend.
The Gambit Weekly editor was one of three American guests on Late Night Live, an ABC Radio National program broadcast from Australia. He gives an account of his own family's evacuation from New Orleans and discusses the far more difficult plight of the city's poor. He also describes AAN's efforts to cover the issues raised by the catastrophe. You can download the September 5 program on Hurricane Katrina from this page.
Late Friday evening, after an exhilarating day in which he participated in a nautical search-and-rescue mission, Gambit Communications co-owner Clancy DuBos spoke with AAN Executive Director Richard Karpel and learned that the AAN relief effort had been announced earlier that day. He then sent the following message via e-mail: "Since Katrina struck, we have been overwhelmed by the enormity of the destruction left in its wake. We are even more overwhelmed by the outpouring of assistance and generosity from our fellow AAN members. This is the highest calling of our organization -- making a real difference in the lives of others -- and proof of what a great group of professionals belong to AAN. We will never forget you. God bless you all."
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