NBC's Katrina coup

Great news coverage is often a combination of great ideas and luck.

Somebody at NBC had the great idea of putting a reporter inside the Superdome as Hurricane Katrina approached on Sunday.

Hard to say who had the idea, but I know this: when it became apparent that the hurricane was a major storm, possibly history-making, most news organizations called a brainstorming session. The primary question: if Katrina is to make history, how do we best capture that history? This question’s source goes back to a famous quote about journalism, and I wish I could remember the source. The quote: journalism is history shot on the wing.

At NBC’s meeting, all sorts of data lay in front of the editors, producers and reporters. It became known that the Superdome would be put into use as a shelter for those who couldn’t obey mandatory evacuation orders or find shelter elsewhere. The idea must have become quickly obvious: thousands of people in a landmark stadium, closed to the heat but maybe not to noise. Why not put a reporter inside the stadium with the “refugees” on Sunday and let him or her ride it out? A great source of human interest quotes and stories, if nothing else, and maybe an interesting storm experience as well . . .

My guess is that Brian Williams, the new NBC Evening News anchor and also the “managing editor” of NBC News, had the idea. If he didn’t, he quickly seized the authority to be the reporter inside the Superdome. As he did, he was remembering another great reporter. In 1961, cars and trucks were streaming inland from Galveston as Hurricane Carla approached the Texas coast. One car, though, was going the other way, toward Galveston and the beaches. In the car was Dan Rather, who reported Hurricane Carla’s arrival from the Galveston sea wall.

NBC News, via the “Today” show this morning, went straight to Williams inside the Superdome, who told of the stadium’s ceiling being peeled away by the hurricane winds, and rain spouting to the Superdome’s floor, as if from a garden hose. Strange, anywhere else but a newsroom, to call such an incident luck, but Williams, by being there, had walked into what would emerge as the headline image of Hurricane Katrina.

For 20 years, when a major disaster story broke, I always went straight to CNN. Seems like it didn’t take CNN more than a couple of minutes to be on top of disaster, whether it was in Turkey or Northridge. But today, CNN’s reporter on the scene stood outside the Superdome, reporting what she could, but obviously distressed that she didn’t have more to report.

I didn’t survey all the channels; maybe another organization had a reporter inside the Superdome. But it sure raised my opinion of NBC, and of its decision to create its 24-hour news cousin on cable and the Web, msnbc. It is a brilliant fit in the new journalism world: a leading national broadcast news organization with a celebrity anchor, feeding its Web arm stuff that was literally inside. The msnbc.com lead story at noon today: “NBC’s Brian Williams hunkers down with Katrina refugees inside Superdome.” Ten minutes later, a new Web post, written by Williams. The lede: “Tonight’s (Evening News) broadcast may be one of those forays into seat-of-the-pants television that we attempt on occasion. We’re in the cement catacombs of the Superdome, which is sopping wet throughout, the roof long since having yielded to Katrina’s persistent advances . . . . Tonight’s broadcast ought to be interesting, and we hope you’ll join us for it.”

Brilliant use of journalism’s powerful new technologies. But the idea was ages-old: go to where the news is or is likely to be.