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A word from the Chief: Covering Katrina
Looking back a decade
S. L. FULLER
Editor in Chief
In one week, The Leader will hit the stands for the first time in this academic year. The first issue is historically the roughest; our editors are learning their new roles, and our writers are brushing the dust off their voice recorders for the first time in months. I couldn’t imagine having a national natural disaster occur during a time when we’re just starting up and adjusting to the new year.
Ten years ago in 2005, when The Leader was printed on Mondays instead of Wednesdays, the first issue of the year was published on Aug. 29. That same day, the nation held its breath as a Category 3 hurricane pummeled the Gulf Coast.
According to History.com, “Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people and affected some 90,000 square miles of the United States.”
Due to timing, Editor in Chief Nicholas Thayer and his staff didn’t have the resources to publish any coverage on the hurricane, and I’m not exactly sure what The Leader’s Internet presence was, if any. Still, to me, that’s a missed opportunity. Meteorologists had been issuing warnings about the storm for nearly a week. There’s no doubt in my mind that Fredonia students cared about an event of this scale, even if it was happening 1,200 miles away.
When I discovered this lack of coverage while looking through the archives, I was disappointed in our publication. As the new Editor in Chief, I want to make sure we report on the things that matter to the campus, and news of hurricane Katrina would have been breaking news. But I kept reading and was pleasantly surprised.
The Leader covered hurricane Katrina from Sept. 6 all the way until Oct. 10, 2005, starting with this:
This page was printed for the following five weeks. By Oct. 10, it looked like this:
Maybe that doesn’t look like a lot of signatures, but it proves this campus cares. On my journey through the archives, I found two articles about fundraisers for hurricane Katrina. They weren’t started by the university or the town. They were started by students.
So, as The Leader starts to put together its first issue of the year, this look back in time came as a nice, and much needed, reminder that we can make a difference. I don’t just mean the staff members on the paper—I mean all of us who attend Fredonia. We have really great students on this campus that do amazing things, even during times of turmoil.