Working in a Coal Mine. Whoop!
A primitive existence set in at the Beaumont Enterprise in the two days following Hurricane Rita. Heat, humidity, rotting food, sweat, undeodorized armpits and ceiling drippings pooling in blood-red ponds throughout the building turned our work home into a swealtering urban swamp.
Without power, flashlights and headlamps became essentials. The darkened building was a different place under these conditions, an unfamiliar cave that became confusing to navigate in places. People wanting to go to one floor found themselves stumbling around in another, sometimes due to fatigue and stress infecting the mind with forgetfulness and lack of purpose. Where was I trying to go? A once-simple trip to the rest room became a creepy odyssey of slogging through ankle-deep water in the darkened pressroom bowels to get to the stolen portable toilets.
A makeshift newsroom was set up on a balcony in the odd, low-ceiling level known as the mezzanine, sandwiched between the first and second floors.
Reporter-photographer teams were set up to travel together and save gas. Gas was gold. They worked by lamp and flashlight over battery-operated computers. Stories were transmitted by a rogue working phone line.
In this kind of news environment, there are more stories than even the world's largest newspaper staff can handle, so we prioritized, doing big-pictures stories mixed with punches of color features that helped paint a picture of Rita's aftermath. Then there were particle-board informational pieces full of critical help lines and how-to stuff.
Stories poured in from reporting outposts set up not only in our multi-county region but in places such as Tyler, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, where we planted flags to cover stories ranging from evacuee life to business and industry.
There was no newspaper publication here, because there were no pressmen to print it and no delivery people to distribute it. A paper could have been printed elsewhere, but who would be here to read it?
Subsequently, we became a live news organization, much like CNN and radio. It took time to shift the mindset, but we soon got into the groove of just relaxing and relaying information to our Houston-based online staff as quickly as possible.
Local emergency officials complained about the federal response to the disaster. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, during a visit here, ignorantly called Rita a "glancing blow" to the area, despite the storm scoring a direct hit, albeit one that put us on the relatively milder west side - or dry side - of the hurricane. The towns and city just over the Louisiana border took the nasty east-side blow, reducing at least one community to sand.
In the darkness, the news machine kept rolling, operating on fumes, adrenaline and a supercharged quest to feed readers - wherever they were out there - every informational crumb possible. We had no idea who was reading us.
Well after 10 p.m., we stopped, broke out our private alcohol stashes and tried to remember details of what the hell we did all day.
Too often, we just couldn't. That's why I started this haywire blog.
Without power, flashlights and headlamps became essentials. The darkened building was a different place under these conditions, an unfamiliar cave that became confusing to navigate in places. People wanting to go to one floor found themselves stumbling around in another, sometimes due to fatigue and stress infecting the mind with forgetfulness and lack of purpose. Where was I trying to go? A once-simple trip to the rest room became a creepy odyssey of slogging through ankle-deep water in the darkened pressroom bowels to get to the stolen portable toilets.
A makeshift newsroom was set up on a balcony in the odd, low-ceiling level known as the mezzanine, sandwiched between the first and second floors.
Reporter-photographer teams were set up to travel together and save gas. Gas was gold. They worked by lamp and flashlight over battery-operated computers. Stories were transmitted by a rogue working phone line.
In this kind of news environment, there are more stories than even the world's largest newspaper staff can handle, so we prioritized, doing big-pictures stories mixed with punches of color features that helped paint a picture of Rita's aftermath. Then there were particle-board informational pieces full of critical help lines and how-to stuff.
Stories poured in from reporting outposts set up not only in our multi-county region but in places such as Tyler, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, where we planted flags to cover stories ranging from evacuee life to business and industry.
There was no newspaper publication here, because there were no pressmen to print it and no delivery people to distribute it. A paper could have been printed elsewhere, but who would be here to read it?
Subsequently, we became a live news organization, much like CNN and radio. It took time to shift the mindset, but we soon got into the groove of just relaxing and relaying information to our Houston-based online staff as quickly as possible.
Local emergency officials complained about the federal response to the disaster. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, during a visit here, ignorantly called Rita a "glancing blow" to the area, despite the storm scoring a direct hit, albeit one that put us on the relatively milder west side - or dry side - of the hurricane. The towns and city just over the Louisiana border took the nasty east-side blow, reducing at least one community to sand.
In the darkness, the news machine kept rolling, operating on fumes, adrenaline and a supercharged quest to feed readers - wherever they were out there - every informational crumb possible. We had no idea who was reading us.
Well after 10 p.m., we stopped, broke out our private alcohol stashes and tried to remember details of what the hell we did all day.
Too often, we just couldn't. That's why I started this haywire blog.
posted by Brian Pearson at 2:29 PM
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