Carpet bagging citizen journalists? An interesting dust-up is taking place between some New Orleans bloggers and a team of out-of-town bloggers organized by a New Orleans native currently living in Los Angeles, Prince Campbell (chartreus) who are traveling to New Orleans for a weekend and posting on a blog called NewOrleansTruth.com.
Frankly, I’m a bit torn on this issue. I applaud anyone’s efforts to focus on the needs of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf coast. However, I also know there are plenty of New Orleans bloggers who have been steadily blogging the natural and man-made disasters of Katrina, the post-storm levee and flood wall collapses and Rita. For example, here is list of over 100 bloggers in New Orleans who have provided an on-location perspective of what’s happening. On August 25-27, many of these bloggers will take part in the Rising Tide Conference, a “convention for people who care about New Orleans.” From the conference wiki, here is the local bloggers’ mission:
We will come together to dispel myths, promote facts, share personal testimonies, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels. We aim to be a “real life” demonstration of internet activism as the nation prepares to mark the one year anniversary of a massive natural disaster followed by governmental failures on a similar scale.
The 15-year-old and I will be visiting New Orleans on Monday, August 14. I’ll be blogging, but I won’t be carpet-bagging and I hate to say, we won’t even be doing any volunteer work this visit. We’ll be eating a wonderful meal and enjoying meeting some friends my colleagues and I at Hammock Publishing made in the months following Katrina. I’ll share more about the visit in the coming days.
Bonus link: Shawn Lea’s list of Katrina anniversary events.
