Inland tropical storm Katrina: As I head to bed, it’s raining in Nashville. (Here’s a link to the National Weather Service’s Experimental Radar from Nashville, although I’m not exactly sure what the experiment is. Southest of Nashville, towards Chattanooga, there are tornado watches and throughout most of middle Tennessee, there are flash flood watches and an “inland tropical storm warning.” I’m sure they’ve been issued here in the past, but I can’t recall ever hearing that specific “inland tropical storm” alert before.

If it’s really windy outside later (30-40 MPH is predicted), I’ll get up early in the morning and go stand outside and pretend to be Anderson Cooper. As the utility lines in my neighborhood are tree magnets, I predict some web-access challeges in a few hours.

Developing.

Technorati Tags: katrina, nashville

Hired because of his blog: Are we ready for the pendulum to swing from articles about people fired because of their blog to articles about people hired because of their blog? If so, I nominate Tom Biro for a “hired” story. Congratulations.

WKRN’s ROI on investing in the Nashville blogosphere: The WKRN weather bloggers at NashvilleWX.com are displaying how blogging is different than reporting. For example, Justin Bruce, who’s been to most Nashville blogger meetups I’ve attended has posted details of the devastion some of his Lousiana relatives have experienced.

WKRN isn’t merely using a blogging platform to format news “content” (which I would applaud even if that were all they were doing), but they are using their blogs to help do away with the concept of “on-air-personality” and to replace it with, what?, on-air human beings — The station manager is even jumping onto the weather blog to let us know when one of them has to go home to get some sleep, when one of them gets sick.

The station has spent months inviting Nashville bloggers to the station (and even giving them and their kids air time. They’ve come to wherever bloggers find themselves together. They not only talk-the-talk but walk-the-walk. In short, they’ve earned “street cred” with a community of bloggers who, when we find ourselves in the midst of breaking news, will not only blog it ourselves as citizen journalists, but will gladly volunteer to be citizen stringers to help the station get the news out.

Bottomline: You can’t wait until the big news happens to put together this type of strategy.

Terry Teachout’s Katrina efforts: I’m very appreciative of Terry’s work to keep up with Katrina bloggers. A great example of running as fast as possible to keep up with something heading in way too many directions.

Also, his note at the bottom of the post speaks for lots of people:

I’ve never been to New Orleans, but I was planning to spend a few weeks there this fall doing research for my Louis Armstrong biography. To all those bloggers posting from the Gulf Coast, and everyone else caught in the path of Katrina: we New Yorkers know about disasters, and our hearts are with you. May the world reach out to you as it did to us.

What Terry said.

Technorati Tags: katrina

As predicted, Shawn Lea is hurricane blogging: In Jackson, Miss., Shawn is in the midst of a stiff wind:

“Our neighbor’s huge old oak tree just fell onto the right side of our house. Much excitement here! But look…I’m still blogging!”

Note to Shawn: Just make sure a tree doesn’t fall on a family member…or your car.

Technorati Tags: katrina, jackson

Target marketing update: In today’s Boston Herald, David Carey calls Lewis Lazare “a crazy nut”. (rexblog flashback: I didn’t say he was a nut, I merely suggested that he didn’t get it.)

Quote:

“For someone who’s never seen The New Yorker and who’s never seen a Target ad before, that’s one thing, and I apologize for all the Martians who might be offended. But for our readers, who are 100 percent loyal, they get it in a nanosecond.”

(via: Romenesko)

“Eye” witness: The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss. [pronounced "buh-LUX-ee"]) has set up a Katrina weblog from an area that got the brunt of the storm. (One of the “hosts” has apparently misspelled his last name “Hammack.”)

Update: Also, Dancing with Katrina weblog, from some recent journalism graduates working at the Sun Herald. (via: Dave Winer)

(via: Shawn, who I anticipate will start blogging the storm when it reaches Jackson in a few hours.)

Hyper-local emergency/crisis blogging – be prepared: In times of local crisis, the importance of having an active blogging community becomes very apparent. There are so many people outside an area who are desperately seeking information — any information — from the ground, so even if power and web-access is out in a city, the information being shared is much needed. (One of the reasons I blog hurricanes is that all of my family (including inlaws) live within one-mile of the Florida or Alabama gulf coasts.) In addition to the standard “meet-ups” that are popular among bloggers here in Nashville and other cities, I suggest that some emergency preparation might be a good thing for bloggers to discuss before the need arises. I’d be happy to point to any examples or list of emergency-blog planning suggestions that exist. Feel free to e-mail me some, or add to the comments below. And I’d be happy to assist in helping Nashville bloggers organize for such an effort.

Update: Josh Hallett makes a good point. It’s time for local public information officers to get to know their hometown bloggers.

Update II: Jeff Jarvis is testing blogging via Treo so he can be ready to blog anytime (I recall he used to blog from church). In Josh’s post linked to above, he notes his Blackberry has continued to work when all else failed.

Katrina Monday: CNN is reporting on-air that part of the roof of the Super Dome is peeling off. It is serving as a shelter of last resort for over 10,000 people. The reporter is saying people inside are concerned, but not panicked.

The Mississippi coast is taking a pounding.

Technorati Tags: katrina