The press has spent the last few weeks patting themselves on their backs regarding their coverage of the horrors of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Well, odds are these are the same reporters who hide out at the pool in Baghdad and report body counts in Iraq, but never get near the real news.

We were led to believe that there was wide spread carnage in these two shelters. They got things so riled up, the rescue workers had a morgue in an 18 wheeler to bring out the hundreds of bodies that were supposed to be in there.

Well the official count is in and the Superdome had 6 dead, the Convention Center 4. Of these deaths there were 6 of natural causes, 2 murders, 1 overdose, and 1 person fell to their death.

TEN DEATHS!

That is all. 50,000 people moved and amidst a horrendous storm, a city ravaged, and only 10 people died in these two shelters. All the while the reporters are repeating verbatim that these sites were full of the dead and the dying. The 7 year olds and the infants raped and left for dead.

These same self satisfied reporters who obviously never ventured into the shelters to see and god forbid report on the story. They took anecodotal evidence and ran with it.

So here we sit with a media that will not go back and self correct. Shepard Scott will not go on his newscast and admit he stayed outside of the fray and did not really go into the Superdome to visually report on the murders that he was so passionately telling America. Geraldo self satisfied smirking as he stood outside of the Convention Center screaming about the mayhem outside as he needed police protection himself. The Police Commander who went on TV screaming that they needed help and that the people were killing themselves in there.

The implied racism screaming from our reporters. The implication that the people of New Orleans were so savage, so untamed, and never said but always implied, oh so black. They were completely willing to believe the stories that America was racist, that blacks were being abused, and that the blacks were rebelling in this environment.

The truth is, the opposite occurred. And the reporters were so racist that they were scared to go into these shelters and report the story. Nope, instead they put on their bereaved faces, and never did their job.

You know, this may have been the day when we saw the true face of todays reporters. They themselves will tell us over and over this is the best they have to offer.

I will stick with blogs, thank you very much. 

New Orleans plan for “rebirth” will center around their tourism industry, as the 120,000 jobs are considered the cornerstone of the economic engine of the region. Travel Weekly (subscription required) has much more.

 Louisiana officials unveiled a preliminary plan last week to help rebuild the state’s devastated travel industry and return more than 120,000 tourism workers to their jobs. The plan would marshal support from government sources, industry groups and companies to help funds the effort. 

Titled Rebirth Louisiana, the plan remains sketchy in its detail. Nevertheless it was quickly endorsed by Travel Industry Association President Roger Dow and other leaders of national tourism organizations.

 

State officials said the plan not only lays a foundation for restoring the tourist areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina, but also anticipates improvements in the tourism industry in New Orleans to make the area the “pre-eminent” destination in the region for national and international tourism.

 

“We have begun the monumental task of rebuilding New Orleans and the surrounding parishes in southeast Louisiana,” Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu told reporters at a gathering of state officials and industry leaders in Baton Rouge last week. “As each day brings new progress, we have been working to marshal every resource to help the vital tourism industry, second-largest in our state, rebound.”

The good thing for New Orleans is that its historical districts were all built on the higher ground, so most of the history of the city has been well preserved after the damage of Hurricane Katrina.

“Our most important cultural assets, including the French Quarter, received minimal damage,” she said.

 

Davis said she toured areas of the historic districts in the region and was relieved to find many of the irreplaceable artifacts — Louis Armstrong’s trumpet, Audubon bird paintings, city documents from 1769 onward, Napoleon’s death mask, and similar draws for tourists — unharmed.

We wish New Orleans the best, it is one of our favorite cities. The road will be long and hard, but the city may come out of this a smaller but better city for travel.

The Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum celebrates th history of ballooning. The location of the museum, Albuquerque, NM otherwise known as the “Balloon Capital of the World.” There is nothing more picturesque than to see the mass release of balloons into the air of the many shapes colors and sizes. The museum will offer great insight in to the questions that so many most likely had but were afraid to ask, myself included

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) One look at the autumn sky here, dotted each morning with colorful hot-air balloons, shows why the city has come to be known as the “Balloon Capital of the World.” That reputation will only grow next month with the opening of a unique museum devoted to the rich history of this most graceful form of flight. The Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum is scheduled to open October 1, coinciding with Albuquerque’s annual Balloon Fiesta, which starts the day before and draws people from around the world.

“For people who aren’t balloonists … there’s a sense of wonder about how these things get up in the air. And who are these people that wake up so early in the morning to do this?” said Marilee Schmit Nason, curator of collections for the new museum. “Our museum will answer those questions and the questions people never knew to ask.”

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