Citizen Journalism

The WE MEDIA response to the crisis

The Times Picayune Community Forums: Aside from its content, the New Orleans paper also has particularly innovative community forums that focus on the hurricane and offer an opportunity for local residents to reach out.

The Sun Herald in Mississippi: The South Mississippi paper’s hurricane blog is up-to-date, relevant and sees heavy traffic with people giving information on shelters, medical aid, relief operation and mobile kitchens among other things.

The Baton Rouge Advocate: The Baton Rouge paper’s blog contains regular updates from Advocate staff writers, including pictures, on areas affected by the hurricane. Casual and personal accounts make it an interesting read.

WWLTV Blog: The local TV station’s blog contains updates as and when they come in. Also written by staff writes, the Blog contain AP updates and personal accounts. It manages to achieve a chronology of major developments

NPR Blog: National Public Radio has also dedicated a blog to the coverage of the hurricane, and updates regularly with the latest news. The blogs are updated daily, providing both a general overview of the situation as well as individual stories.

MetroBlogging New Orleans: A central site for dispatches from New Orleans bloggers, the site has become a focal point for up to the minute first hand details of the situation. Blogs include information as well as personal commentaries and criticism, and has a link to flickr photos.

USC Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review: Provides resources on Katrina that can be edited by readers. Contributions include a list of links to professional and grassroots news of the devastation in New Orleans and along the Gulf coast, as well as a compilation of missing people lists.

The Katrina People Finder Project: A site that uses wikipedia to create a single database of all missing people. Still a work in progress, the central database already has more than 15,000 records entered within one week of the storm. It plans to be connected to mainstream news sites and organizations like the Red Cross.