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Rookie reporters make waves
IT WAS JUST LAST May that Mike Keller and Joshua Norman graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, eager to face whatever tough assignments the news world would hand them. They didn't have long to wait.
On Aug. 28, Hurricane Katrina hit them both with what may turn out to be the biggest story of their careers. As the Category 5 hurricane barreled down on Biloxi, Miss., and the Sun Herald newspaper offices in Gulfport, the two rookie reporters were among just four reporters who agreed to wait out the storm in the newsroom. "The paper said that everyone needs to take care of themselves and can leave, but if you wanted to stay here, you are welcome to do it," Keller, 29, recalls. "We decided to ride it out."
Keller and Norman, who were working at their first full-time reporting jobs for only a few weeks, found themselves spending several nights in the Sun Herald building, living on generator power and no phones, with the destructive sounds and perils of the deadly windstorm howling outside. With little opportunity to get news stories out during the first 36 hours of the hurricane, the reporters spent hours monitoring a police scanner and venturing out whenever possible. They then started a revealing, poignant blog.
Keller, who joined the paper in early August, had come south for the job at the suggestion of his friend and former schoolmate Norman, who had started at the Sun Herald just weeks earlier. A 1998 graduate of the University of Florida, Keller had spent several years as a geographic analyst before he was bitten by the news bug in 2004, when he entered Columbia. During his first weeks at the paper as an environmental reporter, Keller's stories looked at typical coastal development issues.
So when...