Same as it ever was

Alana Taylor sits in a classroom at the NYU journalism school, looks at her clueless professor and finds the whole experience wholly outdated and totally lacking.

I'll alert the media.

THEN ALL THE MEDIA and I -- we veterans of different debacles at different journalism schools at different points in history -- will go to a fine drinking establishment, knock back a few and laugh and laugh and laugh:

Back in class, Quigley tells us we have to remember to bring in the hard copy of the New York Times every week. I take a deep sigh. Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper. I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees.

At least I had hoped that this class would be more advanced. I hoped that perhaps my teacher would be open to the idea of investigating other sources of news from the Internet and discussing how they are reliable or not. I hoped that she wouldn’t refer to podcasts as “being a pain to download” and that being aware of and involved in the digital era wasn’t just a “generational” thing.

I am convinced that I am taking the only old-but-new-but-still-old media class in the country. At this point I may not learn too much I don’t already know about my generation and where it’s taking journalism. But one thing’s for sure — I’m certainly going to gain some insight into what exactly they mean by generation gap.

AND YOU MAY ask yourself, well . . . how did we get here?

Same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was. . . .

Back in my day at the LSU School of Journalism (now the Manship School of Mass Communication), all we wanted was . . . well, what we wanted was a 1981 version of what Alana Taylor wants. That and electric typewriters in every classroom.

Why don't I share a bit from a hard-hitting story in the LSU student newspaper, The Daily Reveille. Someone I know rather well wrote it . . . 27 years ago.

From the Reveille of Oct. 16, 1981:

Equipment and facilities of the University's School of Journalism were criticized as being "antiquated" by Chancellor James Wharton in Thursday's edition of The Daily Reveille.

However, a recent sampling of journalism students say the school's facilities are only part of the problem there.

The students said they faced problems in dealing with typewriters and other equipment in bad repair, but said a far larger problem they faced was a curriculum short on practical experience in their fields.

Most of the sampling also said they felt the absence of video display terminals and other state-of-the-art equipment in the school hampered the students in preparing for future work experiences.

"I feel that (the lack of new equipment) is hurting the students' education. We have manual typewriters in our journalism typing room -- out in the field, not only are people not using manual typewriters, they're not even using electric typewriters. They're using VDTs," said junior news-editorial major Eleanor Ransburg.

"It's not keeping you up to date with what's going on now. We're learning the old ways. We should learn the old ways and the new ways.

"One of our guest speakers in class said he hadn't been in the building since he graduated and the chairs looked like the same ones that were here when he was here in the 1950s," she said.

(snip)

[Junior advertising major Cindy] Blanchard also said the advertising curriculum of the journalism school was deficient. "I think a lot of the teachers are good but I think a lot of the structuring is at fault.

"I think the structuring of the class is really kind of deficient. I think we learn more theory and not enough practical application. We don't get to put into practice what we learn in the book. What I've had so far is not too much of what I can use (in the field)," she said.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS. And yes, Alana, we Young Turks who somewhere along the way turned into journalism fossils feel your pain.

Does this ring a bell, by chance?

An associate managing editor for the student paper also criticized the school for not having enough equipment for its students, as well as School of Journalism Director John C. Merrill.

Lisa Schelp said Merrill is trying to "isolate" the school and train its students to be "academicians" instead of reporters and editors.

"Only having one video display terminal for 25 people in the reporting class is ridiculous, almost every newspaper has terminals," she said. "We don't even have newspapers in the journalism reading room. It doesn't make sense. What we need is exposure to many kinds of newspapers.

"I don't know what his (Merrill's) point is in trying to isolate the journalism school and make us all academicians. We're trying to communicate. We have to communicate with everybody, not just academicians," Schelp said.

LORD. Somebody at that journalism school ought to have said something to that intrepid Reveille reporter (again, with whom I'm well acquainted) about unloading every last jot out of his Stationers' Reporter's Note Book and dumping it into his story. Talk about making a point, rehashing it and then rehashing the rehash. . . .

Then again, back in the day, Reveille reporters got paid by the column inch. Whatever it takes, you know?

But down that path a tangent lies. Let me return to my point here.

Students are always pretty sure they're getting screwed over by somebody. Sometimes, it's even true. For instance, the LSU J-school, overall, was pretty appalling in 1981. Fortunately, our professors still taught us pretty well, despite everything.

Another truism is that journalism school -- or any kind of professional school, it seems to me -- always perfectly trains students for the world that just was. Never the world that will be.

The reason for that is staggeringly simple: We're really good at knowing what just was. And we're not so good at predicting the future. While we might have some general idea of what will be, the future likes to throw knuckleballs -- when it isn't throwing you curveballs.

The state of newspapers and broadcasting today is the curveball with which the future put my generation of J-school grads deep in a hole. When we were in college, there was no Internet for us to master, and "social networking" was Friday night at the Cotton Club. Or maybe the Bengal.

We never knew what hit us. But we're learning.

I suspect Alana Taylor, today's frustrated NYU student, will be doing the same in a couple of decades -- dealing with the unknowable curveball the future throws you while you're deeply engrossed in the World That Just Was.

Gone with the wind after 252 years

The old Boyd oak is falling in the storm
All the huge, green branches blowing down. . . .
Gustav took our tree out in the gale
I don't think that we can take it
'Cause God took so long to make it
And we'll never have that live oak tree again

(with apologies to Jimmy Webb)

The last of the great live oaks on the Capitol grounds in Baton Rouge deserves better than a "MacArthur Park" ripoff, but that's just what happened to come to mind.

It's not all hot gumbo and cold beer being a Baby Boomer, you know.

I TOOK the above picture of the Louisiana State Capitol 20 years ago through the massive limbs of what was called the Thomas Boyd oak, named after the LSU president who presided over the Ol' War Skule when it sat where Huey Long's legacy now reaches for the sky.

Was called the Thomas Boyd oak. Hurricane Gustav put it in the past tense while he was attending to the rest of south Louisiana -- particularly Baton Rouge.

And I'll never take that picture of the Capitol again.

Here's the story from The Advocate:

A tree that had seen more than 250 years of history at the State Capitol — the last of three historic live oaks remaining in the Formal Gardens — was downed by Hurricane Gustav.

The Thomas Boyd oak, with its large branches held off the ground by cables just high enough for passers-by to bend under, was uprooted by the winds that swept through Baton Rouge.

“That was our major loss,” said Mathilde Myers, assistant horticulture manager for the Office of State Buildings.

Back in the 1700s, Myers’ ancestors, the Cabo de Gonzales family, owned land that ran through the Pentagon Barracks to the Arsenal Garden area, she said.

“It was a horticultural garden back then as well,” Myers said. “It wasn’t just for growing row crops or sugar cane. It was more aesthetic-type gardens. It was more for the love of plants.”

The Thomas Boyd oak was once part of a tree trio in the Capitol garden, accompanied by the Annie Boyd oak and Nicholson oak.

The Boyd oaks were named for Col. Thomas Duckett Boyd, president of LSU from 1896 to 1927, and his wife, Anna Fuqua Boyd.

The Annie Boyd oak was uprooted during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

The Nicholson oak, named for LSU math professor and two-time LSU President James S. Nicholson, was already declining after it was struck by lightning and had to be taken down in 2000.

A story in the 1961 Morning Advocate quotes the first grounds superintendent, Euberne Eckert, saying he took borings of the tree in 1941.

Based upon his estimate, the oak’s age in 2008 could be 252 years.

“It will make a real impact, as far as a feeling of loss,” Myers said.

“It was the centerpiece of the garden,” said Louis Wolff, horticulture manager for the Office of State Buildings. “It’s really going to change the overall look of the garden.”

Kulturekampfers für Obama

Translation:

"60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."

Got oil?

For many Americans, the first news of what Hurricane Gustav really did hit might come at the gas pump.

Here, from the Houma Courier, is what you haven't seen on the TV news . . . or in your local newspaper:

More than $1 billion worth of oil and gas per day is not reaching U.S. markets because of damage done by Hurricane Gustav, the director of one of the largest Gulf of Mexico industry supply ports said.

Channels leading to the Gulf of Mexico oilfield clogged by storm debris and lack of electricity at Port Fourchon are the leading problems, said Ted Falgout, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which operates the Fourchon site.

Channels leading to the Gulf of Mexico oilfield clogged by storm debris and lack of electricity at Port Fourchon are the leading problems, said Ted Falgout, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which operates the Fourchon site.

Progress toward recovery was made Friday when the port’s Belle Pass Entrance Channel opened to vessels.

Falgout and other officials said losses would have been greater if the storm, which made landfall at Cocodrie Monday morning as a Category 3 with 110 mph winds, had stayed true to initial projections and ramped up to a Category 4.

Port Fourchon officials worried that the storm would cause the catastrophic consequences predicted in an April report, which details the economic impact of a three-week work stoppage.

The report said a storm like Gustav could cause billions of dollars in lost oil revenue and tens of thousands of lost jobs across the country.

Those scenarios did not materialize, officials and economists agreed. So far, no official estimates have been made concerning the overall effect Gustav will have on oil.

The port continued operating after the storm, and remains on track through generator power, as officials wait for traditional electric service to be restored.

“Clearly right now, there’s probably a billion dollars per day of oil and gas unavailable to the American public that this port plays some role in furnishing,” Falgout said, noting that damage to rigs several miles offshore could play a role in the overall equation.

The oil-speculation markets do not appear to be responding to such predictions, however.

“Apparently what the market is telling us is the damage to the Gulf was not bad at all because oil prices have actually fallen in the face of this,” said Baton Rouge-based economist Loren Scott. “My understanding is 2.3 million barrels of oil were not processed because refineries were down. Maybe we will still seek a spike in oil prices when it becomes clear power is out.”

WELL, I GUESS if the press isn't covering it, maybe the billion-dollar-a-day shortfall of oil and gas didn't really happen.

But if one day next week some soccer mom pulls up to the Exxon station in her SUV and her wallet is $10 lighter than it was after the last fill up, will America then care about Louisiana and the missing wetlands that used to protect the oil-and-gas infrastructure?

No, it won't. That is because gasoline grows on trees at the Exxon-Mobil orchards somewhere in Texas, where the mean gas farmers plant fewer and fewer petroleum trees every year to keep prices artificially high.

Um hmm. It's true.

And you heard it here first. Oh . . . and remember that Ike's coming.

Break out the Welch's and the strippers

Oh yi yi, ma pouvre Louisiane! Could it be that your inherent joie de vivre leaves you somehow susceptible to unending mal de gouvernement?

THE NATION first saw this back in the age of newsreels, with the homespun, strutting demagogue Huey Long giving his dirt-poor subjects some of what other Americans had taken for granted for decades, but giving himself a lot more off the top as he plotted to take the White House from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A couple of decades later, a nation returned to watch the televised spectacle of Huey's little brother Earl crowin' all the way to the funny farm . . . yanked from the loving arms of New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr and thrown into a rubber room, paranoid and stained purple from the grape juice he had taken to pouring over his head.

Two decades after that, America tuned back in to marvel at the grafting -- and womanizing -- antics of the Silver Zipper, one Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, whose present address is the federal prison at Oakdale, La.

Three years ago, television -- and Hurricane Katrina -- introduced a national audience to da mayuh uh Noo Orluns, "Crazy" Ray Nagin, who proceeded to cry and cuss on the radio as his city drowned, then presided -- of a fashion -- over the half-hearted rebuilding of a self-proclaimed "Chocolate City" . . . and an exploding murder rate.

Nagin went on to say the murder spree at least kept the city's "brand" out there. This before he, ultimately, ended up proclaiming himself a "vagina-friendly mayor."

KATRINA GAVE US NAGIN, and now Gustav has given us Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet. According to the Houma Courier, things ain't good after the hurricane down on the bayou in Houma.

And you probably would have heard about that already had Terrebonne's very own Boss Hogg managed to be at least half as entertainingly whack as Nagin.

But Claudet has been anything but. The best the man could muster, says the Courier editorial board, was to hand off the reins of post-deluge power to Roscoe P. Coltrane and slink off to mutter about those damn Duke boys:

Terrebonne’s response to Hurricane Gustav has been hampered by poor communication from parish officials, and most of the responsibility rests with Parish President Michel Claudet.

Problems started long before Claudet ceded his leadership of the parish’s hurricane efforts Tuesday to Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois — something no one got around to announcing to residents until a day later. They started before the storm, as Claudet and his emergency-preparedness director, Jerry Richard, refused to answer even the most basic questions from reporters and the public about what the parish was doing to prepare.

One of the greatest examples is an e-mail received by The Courier and various Louisiana TV stations and newspapers Aug. 29, as Gustav strengthened and forecasters projected with increasing certainty that the hurricane would hit here or somewhere dangerously close.

Neither the name associated with the e-mail, nor the subject line, includes anything that would indicate it is an important notification or that it even came from Terrebonne Parish government. The subject line reads, simply, “press release.” Open it, and here is exactly what it says, in its entirety:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 29, 2008

6:00 A.M. or 0600 hrs. (8/30/08) the EOC will be fully operational.

Mandatory evacuation 4 pm (1600) Saturday, August 30th by declaration of Parish President Michel Claudet.

That was it?

You would think an announcement of that magnitude would have warranted elaboration from the parish president – not a minion or spokesman but the man charged with the wellbeing of 110,000 residents whose lives and property were threatened by a powerful hurricane. And not just to the media but to the people he represents.

(snip)

Throughout this storm, our questions to Claudet and Richard have mostly been met by vague answers, unreturned phone calls, evasiveness or a parish president and emergency director who say they are too busy to tell the people what they are doing to protect them. Sometimes, they simply hang up.

Claudet told the Parish Council, whose members questioned at a meeting Thursday why they, too, have been left out of the loop, that knocked out cell phones and other technological problems impeded communication during the storm.

Once the phones came back on, he said, “all hell broke loose” as officials worked to respond to myriad callers.

“No one can prepare for something like this,” Claudet told the council. “It’s impossible.”

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S response to Katrina, of course, proves that abject incompetence and a tendency to melt down are not phenomena found only within the borders of the Gret Stet.

But you do start to wonder, though, when two hurricanes in three years produce a pair of unrelated meltdowns in basic governance and crisis management. Especially within the context of a state much better at elevating crooks and cartoon characters to high office than statesmen.

Real people suffer because of this stuff. Real progress is stillborn because of this stuff. Louisiana and the American taxpayer ultimately pay a price because of this stuff.

You won't read about any of it in the national press, just like you won't read about the horrendous damage done by Gustav to the state beyond New Orleans' miraculously unbreached levees.

MAYBE IF CLAUDET -- better sooner than later -- pours some grape juice over his head, boinks a stripper, gets hauled off to the booby hatch and then federal prison somebody in a New York newsroom will notice the sufferings of south Louisiana.

HAT TIP: Your Right Hand Thief.

Back to the 19th century

Hey, New Orleans didn't go in the drink.

Move along, nothing to see here. Right?

Well, let me put it this way. The above map is of Baton Rouge -- Louisiana's capital city. It's a community of some 240,000 souls, more or less.

All the orange areas are estimated to be without electricity for 14 to 21 days, thanks to Hurricane Gustav. Large areas of the state are in just as bad shape.

Move along, nothing to see here. Especially when it's pitch dark.

'Now do you care about Louisiana?'

Large swaths of south Louisiana remain dark and in shambles five days in Gustav's wake.

Because the blackest of the blackouts and the shambliest of the shambles lie not within the woebegotten borders of Orleans Parish, the plight of Louisiana is no big whoop to the national media.

IF THE NATION'S ARBITERS of newsworthiness happened by accident to take a look at Friday's Times-Picayune -- after all, it is a New Orleans newspaper -- they might want to rethink their lack of attention to what was hit by the "bullet" the Crescent City dodged:

Three days after Hurricane Gustav made landfall, more than 95 percent of Gulf of Mexico oil production is still shuttered and a key hub for the offshore petroleum industry remains without power.

Gustav slammed into Port Fourchon, a hub used by more than 60 companies to service Gulf rigs and platforms, before coming ashore in Cocodrie on Monday. Port Fourchon also houses the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, a facility that receives about 12 percent of the nation's oil imports.

Director Ted Falgout said Thursday that Port Fourchon may not be able to receive power for four to six weeks. He also said storm sediment and stones displaced from a jetty may leave one of the port's channels impassable for as long as a week.

Meanwhile, the energy sector is beginning to reoccupy its facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, although the bulk of oil and gas production remains shut down. More than 87 percent of the Gulf's natural gas production remained shut down on Thursday, down from 92 percent on Wednesday. More than 95 percent of Gulf oil production remained shut down on Thursday, the same amount as Wednesday.

As of Thursday, 73 percent of the platforms in the Gulf and 52 percent of the rigs in the Gulf remained evacuated. Platforms are the offshore structures from which oil and natural gas are produced. Rigs are offshore drilling facilities.

DOESN'T THIS MEAN that the United States has just lost a pretty big slice of its oil supply for the foreseeable future? And isn't that a big deal?

As a T-shirt popular down on the bayou says, "Now do you care about Louisiana?"

Ve haff veys to deal vith Christianists

I cannot and will not vote for Barack Obama. I cannot and will not vote for a candidate as devoted to abortion -- indeed, infanticide -- as the junior senator from Illinois and his "nutroot" enthusiasts.

On the other side of the political coin, my default position is that I also will not vote for the Party of Unrelenting War, Torture and Social Darwinism . . . and its latest shill for neoconservative geopolitical madness, Sen. John McCain.

At least that was my default position.

EVERY TIME I surf over to blogs such as Crunchy Con and read the latest ravings of Fourth Reich enthusiasts for the Democratic ticket -- stuff like this below -- it makes it just a little more likely that I might hold my nose, pray for the best and vote McCain-Palin:

If Sarah Palin crashes and burns this campaign season, it will be a pity for many reasons, not least because we will no longer have the opportunity to read clarifying missives like the one Mark Steyn received today from a reader in Washington state:

This abortion prohibitionist hag won't cut it among women with brains. And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.

AND THE SOLE REASON I would vote for a party I otherwise loathe would be to spite Nazi monsters like Mark Steyn's correspondent in Washington state.


HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.

3 Chords & the Truth: Falling for September

Mrs. Favog and I love September.

September starts with the Labor Day weekend and a trip to the Nebraska State Fair, rolls right into college football, then glides into the first signs of nippy weather and -- finally -- segues into October with those autumn leaves.

SEPTEMBER IS a month of hustle and bustle, new beginnings for schoolkids and old memories for former schoolkids. September brings out the comfortable old sweatshirts and ushers in the realization that Thanksgiving and Christmas aren't that far off.

We at 3 Chords & the Truth love fall . . . and we love September. September is something to celebrate, particularly in the Midwest. In the Midwest, September is the month that's juuuuuust right.

That's one of the joys of living on the civilized edge of the barely tamed Great Plains. September becomes a celebration -- sort of like a monthlong meteorological Carnival season before the strict and unforgiving Lent of winter on the prairie.

Really, you haven't lived till you've experienced 25 below zero the week before Christmas. Or until it's so cold that yours is the last car running . . . until your battery cable gets so brittle it snaps. And your fingers still get frostbitten through your thick insulated gloves.

Nebraska isn't a place for sissies. But we'll always have September.

And this week on the Big Show, that's what we celebrate -- September. And fall . . . both the seasonal and arse-over-head varieties.

We at 3 Chords & the Truth are funny that way.

Be there. Aloha.

Big blow holds that tiger

Hurricane Gustav hung on to the ball when it hit the wall . . . and who knows when next the goal will be in view for LSU.

LORD KNOWS, the Tigers' next home football game won't be Saturday. The Troy State contest has been pushed back to November.

And no one knows whether it will be possible to play in damaged Tiger Stadium next week either. Even if the old ball yard is fixed up in time, who knows whether Baton Rouge -- still mostly without electricity, a state which will continue for days or weeks -- will be up to the task of a football weekend anytime soon?

From The Advocate in storm-ravaged Baton Rouge:

LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva made the official announcement Wednesday that Saturday’s game between No. 7-ranked LSU and Troy has been postponed to Nov. 15. Tickets already purchased for the Troy game will be honored Nov. 15.

Alleva, LSU System President John Lombardi and Chancellor Michael Martin met Tuesday to discuss options after Gustav ripped through the area Monday.

Moving the game to Monday was not an option and the thought of playing the game in the Superdome or anywhere in the state was also turned down.

“This decision was a university decision and really wasn’t made until earlier (Wednesday) morning when we were sure that we had to postpone the game,” Alleva said.

The determining factors for the postponement were the condition of Tiger Stadium and the LSU campus, as well as the city’s current predicament.

LSU’s campus incurred several pockets of major damage and the venerable football stadium was not spared.

While there isn’t apparent structural damage to the 84-year-old “Death Valley,” the interior absorbed a notable series of blows.

Several seats on the west side of the stadium were damaged and the 200- and 300-level club seats were particularly hard hit, with several awnings ripped away.

Associate athletic director for facilities and grounds Ronnie Haliburton said several team bleachers from the sidelines apparently blew into both sides of the stadium.

The natural grass surface was also victimized with several gashes and divots from debris. Haliburton and his staff spent much of Tuesday removing debris.

The overriding problem with the stadium, though, was as of Wednesday there was no power and no guarantee it would be restored by Saturday and be reliable for a game.

When all factors were weighed, the bottom line was a stadium that wouldn’t have been playable.

“There were a lot of factors why we had to do it,” Alleva said. “The first is safety. Our stadium suffered a lot of damage. There are windows blown out. We don’t know the condition of the scoreboard and the lighting system. … There’s no power and we don’t know when power is going to come back on.

“The city of Baton Rouge is in too bad a shape to take resources away to play a football game. We’ve got to worry about the citizens of Baton Rouge and getting them power and food and water that they need. We’ll reschedule this game and hopefully the city of Baton Rouge will back on its feet shortly.”

AND RIGHT NOW, "hopefully" is up for grabs:

The focus shifts to a Sept. 13 home game against North Texas, but even that may need to be done tentatively.

With crews scattered around the greater Baton Rouge area trying to restore power, there’s no guarantee LSU’s campus will get immediate attention.

“My biggest concern is to make sure the stadium is ready to go next weekend,” Alleva said. “And we’re going to make sure it is, but that’s still a concern. We have to get contractors in here, and obviously contractors are very busy. We have to make sure we get the stadium safe for next weekend.”

Geraldo, I'm ready for my close-up. Geraldo?

There are 250,000 stories in the Darkened City. America's not interested in any of them.

They're not in the script.

IT'S BEEN FEWER than three days since Gustav worked over South Louisiana, devastating towns like Houma, Grand Isle, Lafitte, Plaquemine and Baton Rouge . . . my hometown. Baton Rouge got whacked. Devastated. Laid waste.

My hometown is a dark city tonight. It is a city under curfew. And it is a city of shortages -- short of food, short of ice, short of gasoline.

Baton Rouge also is a city of trees, a city enveloped by a beautiful canopy of old oaks, and magnolias, and pecans, and gums, and pines. Many of those trees tonight lay on the ground.

Across roads.

Atop homes.

Over electric and phone lines.

A lot of my hometown, officials say, might have power in a week or so. The rest might take a month or more to put back online.

For that inland swath of the state, Gustav was the worst hurricane in living memory. Damage will be in the billions and billions of dollars. So, what do we see on the national TV news . . . what do we read in our local newspapers around America?

This: New Orleans' levees didn't bust. New Orleanians clamor to return home. A damaged New Orleans is being repopulated, despite officials' pleas for residents to hold off.

UNDERSTANDABLY, folks in Baton Rouge -- and Houma, Plaquemine and West Feliciana Parish -- are wondering what up with that?

What up with that isn't brain surgery, exactly, this inability of the national media (and the national media spotlight) to adjust to the disaster that happened, as opposed to the disaster they expected. Look at it this way: The news business isn't the news business anymore.

If you look at national TV news -- or the failing newspaper industry -- as exercises in public service, you are sadly mistaken. If not out-and-out naive.

Newspapers have to make a profit in an era when people don't like to read the newspaper. Network (and cable) news operations have been expected to pay their own way for a generation now.

The news business has become just that -- pure business. Capitalism, uncut. News is just another commodity to be sold -- just like toothpaste, beer or cigarettes. To sell the news, you need some sizzle . . . some sex . . . some existential conflict.

You need a story arc. When it comes to Louisiana hurricanes, the story arc centers on New Orleans. Dysfunctional New Orleans.

Forgotten New Orleans. Violent New Orleans. Wronged-by-the-feds New Orleans. Drowned New Orleans. Phoenixlike New Orleans.

And for the last week, it has been Will Phoenixlike New Orleans Get Drowned?

As we all now know, nobody drowned . . . and nobody in government really screwed the pooch this time. This seriously screws up the story arc. It deprives our news marketers of the kind of sizzle they need to sell their product.

Faced with this, the "Mad Men" of American journalism have cut bait. Deprived of a second chance to be the heroes of their own reality-TV show -- Anderson Cooper's Death Storm 2008: Wretches in the Bull's-Eye in Post-Apocalyptic New Orleans -- the networks and the other corporate journalists have done their "dodged a bullet" stories and gone home.

Never mind what the bullet actually hit.

Meanwhile, places like Houma and Baton Rouge suffer unsexily and unnoticed. Here's a thought experiment for you: If a swath of a small, poor Southern state gets blown to hell and back but no one sees it . . . is Sarah Palin the matriarch of the Anchorage Hillbillies, or the savior of the GOP? You Decide.

THE HILLBILLIES the infotainment industry creates out of whole cloth are always more interesting than the hillbillies cleaning up after a natural disaster. And you are hillbillies, you know. Hillbillies from Flyover Country.

Even when your neck of the woods hasn't that many hills to speak of.

Now, if you're a foreign hillbilly or if George W. Bush knocked that pin oak onto your house, call Geraldo Rivera: Warrior Journalist right away. Because it's all about the story arc, and we can't have the "news" jumping the shark.

That's what it all boils down to in a society where everybody is expendable, and everybody else is a commodity available for trade to other commodities in a consumerist society. Your misery isn't news in itself.

Your misery is newsworthy only if it has entertainment value to consumers, who in turn can be sold to advertisers. If you don't believe me, Google some audio or video of news programs and political coverage from a generation or two ago. Compare and contrast to what you get today on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News or MSNBC.

Suffering stinks. And suffering amid the total indifference of others is exponentially worse.

IN THAT LIGHT, what Baton Rouge needs to do is to suffer according to the mainstream media's preconceived story arc. Facts on the ground are irrelevant if they don't match the story outlined in advance by producers in New York.

For instance, have Kip Holden -- the mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish -- act crazy. Crazy as a loon. Blame somebody for something . . . anything. Hire some looters.

Remember, it's the story. Not the news.

And that's the way it is -- Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008.

When you assume. . . .

You know the old saying, "When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME"?

Down in Baton Rouge, The Advocate never heard of that one. Before Hurricane Gustav came roaring in, the newspaper's publisher assumed -- with a hurricane on the way -- that the paper's brand-new printing plant would not lose power.

IN A HURRICANE.

Wednesday, The Advocate publicly wipes the egg off its face. Not that many of its subscribers ever will read about it:

Capital City Press did not publish a newsprint edition of The Advocate on Tuesday because it did not rent a backup generator to power the presses halted by Hurricane Gustav.

Instead, it posted the 48-page product it put together the night before in a format that retains the layout the newspaper would have had in print and distributed 200 office-paper copies Tuesday afternoon to agencies providing recovery services.

Beginning today, the paper is being printed by The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette until power is restored to Capital City Press’s Rieger Road printing facility, which could take several days or longer, Publisher David Manship said.

The newspaper’s content is produced at the editorial and administrative offices on Bluebonnet Boulevard, which have backup power.

Manship said Entergy Corp. told the paper before the storm that the printing facility could have power back by Thursday, but Manship pointed out the paper will be in line behind hospitals and other emergency service providers and that it could take longer.

Thursday’s paper and subsequent editions will be larger than today’s 16-page paper.

It also will begin running advertising again, though ads will be contained to recovery-related services.

Manship said the paper will be delivered to parts of the metro area where carriers have access. He also said carriers will make papers available at points close to those areas they cannot reach because of downed trees and power lines.

The Daily Advertiser printed 50,000 copies of today’s paper when it finished printing its own, at 3:30 a.m.

Manship said the goal is to have papers delivered by noon.

“We’ll … distribute them as best we can,” he said, noting traffic and fuel availability will be major factors.

Executive Editor Carl Redman said today’s edition seeks to balance much-needed information about the storm with other elements — comics, puzzles and some national sports news — that offer a sense of normality.

He said the main challenge so far is getting reports in from the field because of the lack of power and the unreliable communications infrastructure.

He added the newsroom is using the Web site to get information out as quickly as possible and is posting more photographs than usual.

(snip)

Manship said he had to decide last week whether to pay $20,000 for a back-up generator by Thursday and decided against it because he didn’t think the printing facility would lose power.

“We made the decision that we didn’t want one,” he said, “and it was obviously a bad call on our part.”

While he conferred with a couple of department heads, Manship said the call was his.

“I was the ultimate decision-maker on that,” he said.

Newspapers generally pride themselves on performing their civic function regardless of — and especially during — difficult circumstances.

Tuesday was the first time in memory that The Advocate wasn’t published on a day it was supposed to.

UNREAL. That paper has a new printing plant, and you'd have to wonder why The Advocate's powers that be didn't just eat that cost upfront as part of the build-out. Especially in hurricane country.

But it is what it is. And the home of "Why Try Harder?" continues its unbroken streak of short-sightedness in breaking its streak of daily publication.

And a fine lot of good plopping PDF files on the website will do for a largely powerless (and Internet deprived) city -- full of subscribers who didn't evacuate out of the storm zone.

Tweet Jesus! On hold with the Red Cross

Still on hold w/ Red Cross. Music. Won't. Stop. Waterboard me instead. Make it stop! Tell Jack Bauer the nuke's in the Hill Metro station.

3 minutes ago from web


Starting over w/ Red Cross permahold. "A representative will be with you shortly." Are we talking "shortly" as in, like, geological eras? 16 minutes ago from web


57 minutes on hold with the Red Cross. Still no help for Mama, who is too damn clueless to get help for herself -- and, indeed, refuses to. 20 minutes ago from web


Please let me hold in silence! I CONFESS! I am 21st hijacker! I killed the Kennedys! I blew up the Maine! Josef Mengele was my chiropractor! 23 minutes ago from web


That . . . music. It's the Abu Ghraib of on-hold music. Make. It. Stop. PLEASE! I tell you where IED is hidden! OH NO! It's Lynndie England! 28 minutes ago from web


The Red Cross representatives are not currently assisting THIS caller. Sorry, Mama . . . at least you had a nice 85-year run. Ack! 32 minutes ago from web


I think the only Red Cross operator on disaster duty right now must be Clara Barton. A disaster-relief version of the Dead String Quartet. 34 minutes ago from web


Still on permahold w/ the Red Cross. Never want to hear cheesy synthesizers and chimes again. Make. It. Stop. AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! 37 minutes ago from web


The Red Cross disaster call center is here in Omaha. I could have walked there & knocked on the door by now. Sheesh. about 1 hour ago from web


Mama will be OK while it's cloudy & cool (relatively). But she won't help herself & she'll be in trouble w/ no power (or AC) in a day or 2. about 1 hour ago from web


Thought I was being clever in calling Red Cross at 1 a.m. On permahold. Trying to get special-needs aid for my elderly mom in Baton Rouge. about 1 hour ago from web

Give me death, or give me death

Democrats just don't want to win.

THE DEMOCRATS don't want to win the presidential election so badly that -- even when faced with a disastrous president pursuing disastrous policies and a GOP candidate who's just fine with steering the ship of state straight into the hurricane -- they seek to focus the election on the "right" of American women to eliminate their offspring.

In a nation riven half-and-half over the "right to choose" (to kill your baby), it's just unbelievable that the Obama campaign wants to highlight an issue that absolutely, positively guarantees that millions of conscientious Americans absolutely, positively can't vote for their man. Politico reports on the Democrats' abortion madness:

Barack Obama has launched a broadside against John McCain’s opposition to abortion rights and moved one of the most divisive issues in modern American politics to the airwaves on a large scale for the first time in this presidential campaign.

Obama’s new radio ad, airing widely in at least seven swing states, tells voters McCain “will make abortion illegal.” It’s airing as McCain courts female voters with the addition of the staunchly anti-abortion governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, to his ticket.

Democrats had, until now, sought to appeal to women primarily on economic issues such as health care and workplace discrimination; abortion rights were hardly mentioned at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week. But women’s rights groups have been urging Obama to attack McCain on the issue, pointing to polling showing that some women who support McCain think he supports abortion rights. In fact, the Arizona senator has long supported a ban on abortions, with exceptions for victims of rape and incest, and for pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother. Palin has an even firmer anti-abortion stance: She would require rape and incest victims to carry their pregnancies to term.

“Let me tell you: If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, the lives and health of women will be put at risk. That's why this election is so important,” says the nurse-practitioner who narrates Obama’s ad. “John McCain's out of touch with women today. McCain wants to take away our right to choose. That's what women need to understand. That's how high the stakes are.”

IT'S AN AMAZING, and horrific, thing when a once-great political party so gives itself over to death and destruction. The only thing worse is what we have today -- both parties having given themselves over to death and destruction, albeit of different sorts.

Flashlight . . . check. Batteries . . . check. Trojans . . . check. Butt paste . . . check.

My hometown is a broken and dark city on the mighty Mississippi -- battered by Gustav, largely without electricity, bracing for flooding from rain-swollen waterways and waiting out an overnight curfew.

IT TOOK 43 YEARS, but a hurricane finally whacked Baton Rouge worse than the gold standard of stormy suck -- Betsy in 1965.

I'm sitting here in Omaha early, early this Tuesday morning, listening to continuing coverage on WJBO, the city's news-talk station that has enough Internet connectivity to stream its signal but not a lick of telephone service. Hurricanes are funny that way.

But across town, it's good to know that the hurricane-chasing reporters and cameramen of WAFB television are chockablock with Trojans and Boudreaux's Butt Paste.

Are the TV people having the Mother of All Hurricane Parties . . . or what? According to a Channel 9 cameraman's storm blog, chalk one up for "or what":

That hair dryer at the bottom of the picture isn't just to keep the reporters well-coiffed. It comes in handy to de-fog a lens or dry the humidity from our cameras as well as dry our socks.

And might surprise you to know that no storm chaser worth their Doppler would dream of leaving the station without a box of condoms . . . Now, now, you're getting ahead of me. They're not for a game of Beach Blanket Bingo. Condoms are the absolute best things we've found to keep our microphones dry and operating like they're supposed to.

And one thing not pictured, but equally important, is a giant tube of Boudreaux's Butt Paste. Perfect for those occasions when sand gets trapped in your sensitive parts. And there's a whole lot of sand blowing around Grand Isle.

UHHHHHH . . . RIGHT. Though you have to wonder what some sheriff down on the bayou might be thinking when the Channel 9 storm chasers shove a Trojan-sheathed mic in his face.

Gustav, the deadly ironist

Hurricanes not only are destructive, they are ironic.

CHANNEL 9 IN BATON ROUGE reports two deaths in the city -- an elderly couple who fled the central Louisiana coast for shelter in the capital -- marking Hurricane Gustav's first U.S. victims.

Here's the story from the WAFB television website:

Police say two people were killed Monday when a tree fell on a home at 1218 Elmcrest in Baton Rouge. It happened about 1:20 p.m.

The victims have been identified as 72-year-old Richard Broussard and his wife, 71-year-old Mary Ann Darby Broussard, both of Abbeville.

Police say the couple had come to Baton Rouge to stay at their daughter's boyfriend's home during Hurricane Gustav.

A large tree fell from a neighbor's home onto the house, killing both victims.

Officers say the couple's daughter and her boyfriend also suffered minor-moderate injuries and were transported to a local hospital by EMS.

You know you're a Midwesterner when. . . .

You know, after long years in the Great White Nawth, you finally have become a Midwesterner when you're horrified by a TV station's lack of alarm at a tornado warning.

You've got to understand. I live in Omaha, Neb., on the northern end of "Tornado Alley." A large slice through the heart of my city was leveled by an EF-4 monster in 1975.

Several smaller twisters have taken chunks out of Omaha neighborhoods this spring, and the whole place got knocked silly by a late-June thunderstorm that acted like a short-lived Category 2 hurricane.

NEBRASKANS -- Omahans -- don't mess with tornadoes, just like New Orleanians no longer mess around with hurricanes in Katrina's wake. And at Omaha television and radio stations, it's all hands on deck and wall cloud-to-wall cloud coverage every time the sirens go off.

Reporters are chasing the storm and calling in with blow by blow reports. Meteorologists are plotting storm paths and arrival times on their Doppler radar displays.

Viewers are E-mailing in digital pictures of snaking funnel clouds.

And storm-wary Omaha folk are heading for "safe shelter" in our basements.

WHERE I'M ORIGINALLY FROM, though, this concept unfortunately doesn't exist. If Baton Rouge's creaky old air-raid sirens sounded for a tornado warning, locals would think it was either the Russkies or the Luftwaffe about to blow them up good.

I think this might be why so many Southerners end up getting themselves killed when tornadoes fall upon them from a black, stormy sky.

That is because, in the opinion of we Midwestern twister veterans, lukewarm Southerners are quite insane.

This was my first thought, when the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning as I was watching Hurricane Gustav coverage on WAFB in Baton Rouge. Frankly, Channel 9 didn't seem that excited that potential death was threatening to snake out of Gustav's outer bands.

The station didn't find it necessary to break away from news reports about Gustav's impending arrival. Or from commercials, for that matter.

When the Channel 9 weatherman did come on screen, he casually mentioned rotation in a storm over Livingston Parish and headed fast for the capital city. It might be a good idea to take shelter in an interior room or hallway.

I thought I might be watching Al Sleet. "Heyyyyyyyyyyy! Que pasaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

NO. NOT QUE PASA. I am from Omaha.

We. Know. Tornadoes.

The proper response, Baton Rouge, is "AAAIIIIEEEE!!! SEEK SAFE SHELTER NOW!!! Joe Schmoe in the field is right behind this supercell -- Joe, what are you seeing now?"

Three Omaha TV stations and several radio stations were caught asleep at the switch at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning when a couple of twisters touched down in suburban Omaha. There was hell to pay. Particularly for the station caught airing a rerun of The Wild, Wild West.

And the one TV station with a meteorologist at the switch . . . the one station sounding the alarm before the storms touched down -- and before the storm sirens could go off -- now is The Station of Tornado Heroes.

Channel 9's "Heyyyyyy! Que pasaaaaaa!" act wouldn't fly in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. Omaha, by God, Nebraska, is not an Al Sleet kind of media market.

What hurricanes are to Baton Rouge and New Orleans, tornadoes are to Omaha and the Midwest. And while lots of Omahans might not know a storm surge from a storm cellar, they'd know what to do when one of them twisters dropped out of a feeder band.

Uh huh, yes we would.