Gunillocentrism – web diary of a freelance journalist

I am so sorry I am not in Louisiana right now, reporting on the catastrophe. For lots of reasons (family affairs, technical woes, the usual bad cash-flow, und so weiter) I didn’t manage to buy a ticket for New York so I could leave by the end of August, as I had planned. So, I won’t go “home to Harlem” until September 8. That ticket wasn’t even cheap! (But at least it is a direct flight.)

And last Thursday, my editors at TT finally asked me if I could go to Louisiana.

Note, this is the first time they asked me to go somewhere in the USA that did not involve a Swede. Previous fieldwork that has been initiated by TT has been on Kenny Bräck, Annika Sörenstam, Annika Östberg, and Jan Eliasson; all my other report trips in the USA has been initiated and paid by me, myself and I. (Well, TT did pay for my trip to Pennsylvania and Washington for the presidential election in November, which was excellent. But I really had to struggle to make that happen, because they thought I could stay at home in New York and report – despite the fact that they already had another reporter there, and noone else anywhere in the USA.)
This is to say that I couldn’t really expect them to send me even to a great scale disaster zone as Louisiana. But of course the story has grown really big now.

Too late. I had to decline. Can’t change my ticket. So typical! Not that I exactly *want* to report from disaster zones – but I do feel I’m ready for it somehow, after all my university courses on humanitarian affairs and yes, with my still-humble-but-ever-growing field experience.

Also, I have been in New Orleans before, which I believe makes for better reporting – and as a resident of a ghetto, albeit a privileged resident of a pretty privileged ghetto, I do know a little bit about marginalized people in the US (I like to believe). Of course, what I reported about last time I was there was gourmet restaurant and tourist activities, but I did walk around in the slum areas and certainly knew Louisiana has a huge population of black urban poor. (I was a little astonished that so many Swedish media concentrated on interviewing the few Swedish people who live in New Orleans, about their evacuation plans.)

And, as many of you know, I have been lamenting for months that no editor was interested in my stories from Gonaïves in Haiti last year. In September of 2004, Gonaïves experienced exactly what New Orleans is experiencing now, albeit on a smaller scale and without the economical, world-political, and cultural ramifications (hence, of course, the lack of interest). I and photographer Karl Melander was there in November, see my posting on this here; click on “Exemplet Haiti” to the right.

All this means I am very frustrated right now, sitting in my beautiful but a little too idyllic garden in Stockholm. (TT will send a reporter from Stockholm to the disaster zone.)

My editor tried to cheer me up by saying that there will probably be reasons to report from Louisiana for months to come. So true. But still frustrating.

Gunilla

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I won’t say anything about the disaster here, so many people do it much better than I could (from my garden…).
I would, however, recommend you to check out Mark Lynas’ blog where he makes the link to global warming. I read his book High Tide /check out the reviews!/ during my trip in Greenland. It’s highly recommended reading for anyone interested in how climate changes are affecting people around the world! The book is also translated into Swedish: Oväder/Ordfront.

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I guess I should have categorized this posting as “NOT covering something”. The category “media criticism” should, this time, be interpreted as “self criticism”.