They deserve the goddamned Pulitzer, is what I think.

I used to do this. Never at that level of need, but I used to do this. Now I fill the sandbags and haul people out of the wreckage, or would it they called.

They still haven't called us up, but Rita is coming, and my bags are still packed. Reading the news is painful. The bitter pain of frustration. The story is there, the need for the Guard is there and I am here, serving by waiting.

Thank you. A small bit of chatharsis to read this and cry.

they are all heros. pass the pulitzers and whatever else is handy. if these folks were not on the scene, i can only imagine how much worse things might have been, and how much less we might have known.

And PJ, might I contend that rather than "above and beyond" that is actually the clearest expression of the call (The Call?) that has been seen in the media for a good long while?

There *is* a call for people, I believe, and people who listen well enough get to do that sort of expression of it, I think. Be it an inward thing, made of biologically controlled impulses or an outward pressure, intelligent or otherwise, seeing that call/calling responded to so heroically was one of the satisfying aspects of reading the story.

If not, I'll pass on what I hear whenever they do get back to me. Supporting their continued coverage--in a time when they have, indeed, lost much of their financial base--seems a worthy thing to do.

We need another award for those journalists who tell the truth in 12-foot letters of fire, "Look! See! We're in this together. This is what it means to be human."

The T-P staff gets that one, no contest.

As I said elsewhere, about awards, these guys deserve them, but in a trade where the motto is, "what have you done lately," these few can say, "I was with the Times-Picayune, in New Orleans," when like the aged heros of Shakespeare's Agincourt,

"... gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

I thought about that-for the web version, starting at something like $1500 100K minimum impressions. (Haven't found info on print rates.)

If there's no way to donate in smaller amounts, I suppose we could take up a collection for an ad, maybe.

Will wait a bit to see if I hear back first, though.

The journalists have done a tremendous job of covering the disaster. Journalists from other news outlets have also been good (I've evenm been impressed by some of the Fox people), but nothing like the T-P staff.

Not for the squeamish.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/neodymium155/

aan.org/gambitfund

Emergency fund to help out the staff of the New Orleans Gambit.

This story, I couldn't tear my eyes from. There was so much personal humanity expressed by the journalist writing the article. It truly brought home to me the massive enormity of the loss that is Hurricane Katrina. The loss of lives is devastating, but the loss of basic human dignity is a tragedy of it's own. I'm not sure who my heart goes out to the most: those mourning the loss of their loved ones, or those who have to live with the memories of surviving Katrina, of surviving the filth, the hunger, and the fear. The fact is these journalists voluntarily embraced those experiences, a heroic act in and of itself. But, by listening, simply listening, to the stories of the survivors, by saying "your suffering matters, please let me tell others about it..." and being the survivors' voice in a dark and dangerous hour, they did more than their just their jobs; they returned to the survivors a small measure of their human dignity. A Pulitzer Prize can't begin to touch that. No award can.

Cady