TVNewser NAB blogger Scott Baker sums up the Sunday afternoon RTNDA@NAB Super Session titled "Katrina: The Lessons Learned." Shepard Smith was the moderator.

"...CBS Correspondent Lee Cowan said something revealing. He said that even now around the office with producers and photographers who had worked the story for long stretches with him -- that they don't really talk about it.

Heads nodded.

Shepard Smith said it had a 9-11 feel. You just couldn't talk about it."

Click continued for the must-read recap...




For three or four seconds in the video summary of Katrina coverage that began the session you saw a sign.

A mission statement in a newsroom that had two lines. Ones clearly written long before the disaster.

Make Budget.

Beat Market. But at some weary point deep into dealing covering Katrina someone had drawn a line through those two and added a third.

Help Humanity.

Humanity may have been the best part of the opening session of RTNDA.

The focus on the lessons of Katrina, helped by Shepard Smith's gentle (yes!) moderation, moved through expected paces of how journalists covered it. What worked. What didn't. And the panel, news directors, reporters, managers and one capable voice from a critical helicopter, did a very effective job ticking through the critical moments.

But halfway through the 90 minutes, the session pushed into a deeper direction when the panel in a way stopped talking to the audience and began talking to each other.

They began talking about how the doing of the job became a way of channeling the misery. One ND said some staffers didn't go home for weeks knowing simply that then it would become too real. It was easier to stay and work.

Another ND, Anzio Williams, described a WDSU-TV photographer shooting video as he returned to what was left of his own home, putting the piece together for air, and the ND thinking -- why didn't the guy cry? When would he?

WWL-TV's Sandy Breland talked about bringing in counselors. Of course, the staff waved them off. But then Sandy told of how she just had to get to the point of pulling people aside -- because she knew they needed to talk to someone.

Radio News Director Dave Cohen talked about the isolation of his radio staff members, cut off from their families and homes, and how they formed RV communities. How beer and barbecue became medicinal.

Then CBS Correspondent Lee Cowan said something revealing. He said that even now around the office with producers and photographers who had worked the story for long stretches with him -- that they don't really talk about it.

Heads nodded.

Shepard Smith said it had a 9-11 feel. You just couldn't talk about it.

Sandy added that she had staffers suffering terrible guilt because they didn't not loose as much as other co-workers did.

For 15 minutes this session became a window into a very specific and difficult world.

There were many other good points about dealing with disaster plans, and political leaders, and keeping the story alive.

But I'll remember those 15 minutes.

And there also, quietly sitting on the front row, Dan Rather. A reporter made for hurricanes. This time he listened. And at the very end when a microphone was brought to him said simply, "I learned a lot."