InkBlots

Items from newspapers and print media on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall…

• The SunHerald runs down the list of the City of Gulfport’s Hurricane Heroes, which were honored in a special ceremony on the eve of the first anniversary of Katrina’s landfall. The newspaper made the list.
• Exactly one year ago, Editor & Publisher chose a blog-like approach to monitor the disaster unfolding in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast — one of the few news outlets early on to draw on reader forums and blogs at local newspaper sites. Here are selections from the first 24 hours after the storm struck, mainly contributed by E&P Editor Greg Mitchell.
  
• E&P also revisits the herculean efforts of The Times-Picayune staff in New Orleans in the hours and days after the storm swamped that city with catastrophic flood waters.
• The Sun Herald has a sobering, massive collection of Before-and-After photographs of virtually every significant home, building and lanmark in the tri-county coastal region. It’s an impressive, but grim, reminder of how things used to be.
• The peaceful tranquility of August 29, 2006 was in stark contrast to what was going on one year earlier in Hancock County, as the Sea Coast Echo recalled.
• As it happened: The Mississippi Press has PDFs available for viewing of nearly three month’s worth of front pages following the impact of Katrina.
  

Forbes Magazine has released its rankings of the Best States for Business. And Mississippi is two rungs from the bottom of the barrel, spared only by West Virginia and Louisiana, uh, respectively. The Magnolia State ranked 48th, with Southern brethren in North Carolina, Texas and Virginia topping the list. The Charleston (W.V.) Daily Mail cogitates on what it all means.

Jack Davis, editor of The Courant in Hartford, Conn., has made several post-Katrina visits to the Gulf Coast. After his most recent, he offered this essay on recovery efforts and Mississippi and much of Louisiana is well on its way back. But he worries New Orleans could burn through the billions in federal aid with relatively little to show for it.

Both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature this week passed resolutions commending The Sun Herald for being awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for public service. The paper, meanwhile, is undertaking a massive five-part special to commemorate the first anniversary of the storm, while keeping a wary eye on Tropical Storm Ernesto, which, as of Sunday, was churning through the Caribbean Ocean.

The First 48 Hours: The Sun-Herald staff revisits the initial horror of the storm and the agonizing day that followed its brutal impact on the Gulf Coast near Waveland and Bay St. Louis.

Where We Are: It’s hard to say where we are a year after Hurricane Katrina, but for most people it’s in between. Dick and Nola Dickens of Long Beach are in between a travel trailer and their home. They’ve posted a sign that proclaims “We’re baaack smaller n poorer.”

Where We’re Going: The paper examines progress going forward and how long it will take the region to overcome the challenges that linger. The Governor’s Commission Report ponders: “Will we get it right this time?”

Later this week, the paper delves into stories telling of the countless volunteers and the heroic efforts of survivors.

Richard A. Schneider, new editor of the Pensacola News Journal, mulled the state of the print business while traversing U.S. 45 from Tennessee through Mississippi and Alabama to Florida and why he chose to leave his job as the top of the editorial heap at the Jackson (Tenn.) Sun in exchange for the sandy beaches of Florida. Because, he says, the News Journal “gets it.”

Clarion-Ledger executive editor Ronnie Agnew comments on the marked changes on the Gulf Coast in the time since national news crews pulled p stakes and moved recovery from Katrina off their newscasts and front pages. Coast residents knew the time would come for the obligatory anniversary obsvervances, and they’re doing their best to embrace the media now returning to the area.

Sean Reilly is communications manager for the City of Overland Park, Kan., and one of about 50 city employees who trekked to the Gulf Coast to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Bob Sigman, opinion page editor at the Johnson County Sun, recently interviewed Reilly on his recollections of his trip to the Gulf Coast and the coffee table book published by The Sun Herald that brought all the memories back.

Rebecca Baldwin has been named general manager of the Zap2it network, an entertainment information network owned by Tribune Media Services. Baldwin holds a degree in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi.

From The Clarion-Ledger: Journalist George E. Curry is a distinguished visiting professor at Mississippi Valley State University, bringing more than 35 years of journalism experience to the classroom.

Curry, a syndicated columnist, TV and radio commentator, and editor in chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, which provides news coverage to more than 200 African-American newspapers, will teach two journalism classes and work with print and broadcast students in the Department of Mass Communications, said Samuel Osunde, chair of the department.

Editor and Publisher reports Gulf Coast newspapers are walking a “tightrope” between deserved recognition of Hurricane Katrina on the anniversary of the storm and overplaying the still-fresh disaster on their front pages.