The news that came out of the Galveston storm bears certain similarities to the initial reports on Hurricane Katrina, 105 years later. The first vignette from a Houston Chronicle story headlined “Katrina: The Aftermath; Scenes,” published two days after the hurricane decimated New Orleans in 2005, is about the city’s major newspaper. “Tuesday morning, a note posted on the Times-Picayune‘sWeb site drove home the personal danger of staying behind to report the story,” the Chronicle wrote. It quoted an announcement from the Times-Picayune Web site announcing the newspaper was evacuating its New Orleans headquarters.

“Water continues to rise around our building, as it is throughout the region,” the posting said. “We want to evacuate our employees and families while we are still able to safely leave our building.” It was unclear later how, or whether, the paper would print today’s editions.

It is hard to imagine what the reporting of Hurricane Katrina in 2005—when newspapers covered the story alongside outlets on radio, television, and the Internet—could have in common with the reporting on Galveston’s catastrophic hurricane of 1900, when the only coverage came from newspaper reporters at the mercy of telegraph wires. Yet when stories like the first ones from the Houston Chronicle are compared to the initial out-of-town newspaper reports about the Galveston disaster, it is clear that one thing remains constant: the challenge of gathering and disseminating news during a disaster makes the business of reporting an integral part of the story.

The Times-Picayune was doing impressive and heroic reporting during Katrina, for which it ultimately received a Pulitzer Prize. But it also found itself a leading character in the coverage of the storm. The New York Times ran two stories highlighted the paper’s challenges in the week after the hurricane, as it first sought refuge in the town of Houma before being forced to move again to Baton Rouge.

The Times-Picayune was not alone in being transformed from newsgatherer to newsmaker. AP reporter Charlotte Porter, bureau chief for Louisiana and Mississippi, found herself the focus of a profile in the Dallas Morning News. “Charlotte Porter longs for the moment she can go home and sleep in her own bed,” the story led. “But Tuesday, with a choke in her voice, she said she wasn’t sure that either possibility stood much of a chance.”

Even the Weather Channel made news. “If hurricane king Jim Cantore gets knocked off the air,” began a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Mother Nature must be putting up quite a fight.” Cantore was reportedly “swamped by Katrina” in the Mississippi city of Gulfport, and kept off the air for about six hours. He was “even out touch with the network’s headquarters in Atlanta, where leaders worried about their star reporter and the crew that accompanied him.

In addition to individual reporters and outlets, one medium was elevated to star status by the reporting-on-reporting: the Internet. Stories on the Internet’s role in coverage ranged from the Chicago Tribune’s “Uses snap up the latest on Web” to the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Patriot News’ “Web sites follow the aftermath of Katrina.” “Katrina triggers a tsunami of blogs,” was the headline on an August 31 AP story. “With entire counties isolated and telephone service knocked out along the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coast,” wrote the AP, “refugees and their loved ones are trying to use the Internet to stay in touch—and to plead for help for those still missing.” The story reprinted several online pleas for help. The story began, “Two days after Hurricane Katrina decimated America’s Gulf Coast, this cry reverberated through cyberspace:”

“Looking for a granddaughter living in Biloxi but may have stopped in Gulfport with other relatives. Haven’t heard from her since Sunday afternoon … PLEASE EMAIL ME ASAP IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE OR HOW SHE IS … “

As media proliferate, stories of how disasters get reported will become an ever more interesting part of disaster reporting. The heavy use of Twitter (and the reporting on the heavy use of Twitter) during last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai is pointing towards an era when fragmented information on disasters emerges rapidly, and reporters will find it more fascinating—and necessary—to understand who produced reports so they can stitch them together into a coherent story. As electronic media further opens avenues of communication, however, the line between the covered and the coverers may blur altogether.

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