Reporters measure Hurricane Katrina's effects on their business communities

By Ryan Basen
September 16, 2005 04:17 PM

The Palm Beach Post waited about two weeks after Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast to run a detailed account of how the storm has affected its local economy.

And yet, some of The Post's reporting staff was told they should have waited a bit longer. Even as crews had already begun cleaning up and reconstructing Gulf shore towns ravaged by Katrina, many reporters have found that experts can't yet quantify the effects of the storm on their local economies.

"We keep hearing it's too early to tell what the impacts will be locally," says Len Boselovic, a business reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Despite that uncertainty, newspapers dove in to report on this subject for local readers. Their reporters turned up many facts about the short-term consequences and solid estimates for the long-term ones for area companies and industries that rely substantially on Louisiana's economic health.

The business staff of the Post-Gazette, for example, pounded the pavement to gauge Katrina's impact on the regional economy, producing:

•  A roundup of local companies' plights immediately after Katrina.

•  A story about local construction firms' boosts in business due to natural disasters.

•  A piece detailing changes in the commodities market one week after Katrina touched down in the Gulf.

In those pieces, the staff noted that U.S. Airways had to cancel 171 flights over three days because of surging fuel costs, that local company Mistick Construction was already at work restoring property in Mobile, Ala., and that coal prices were surging.

Boselovic, who contributed to each of those pieces, says it was important to pursue the local economic impact angle of the Katrina story immediately after the storm hit. Readers "expect to see something" written about it, he says, especially in the Pittsburgh area, with its important metals and construction industries.

In Anne Arundel County in Maryland, reporters focused on companies that specialize in disaster relief. They experienced a boost in business. Other businesses weren't as lucky. Local seafood restaurants faced a shortage of crabs just before the busy Labor Day weekend, because they receive as much as 90 percent of their supply from Louisiana.

"Katrina really altered the business landscape in this area," says Peter Holley, a general assignment reporter who worked on both stories for The Annapolis Capital. "I was surprised to find out how profound the reverberations were."

A few other developments -- regarding reduced tourism and utilities supplies in Palm Beach County -- did not surprise Jeff Ostrowski, a Palm Beach Post reporter who wrote its local economic impact piece.

The real challenges for Ostrowski and about a half-dozen colleagues were finding a wide range of sources and accurately purveying the impact of Katrina. Ostrowski alone placed about 20 calls to local businesses and experts, and the staff collectively used about a dozen sources in the 1,700-word story.

Working with such a large group "takes a lot of the pressure off," Ostrowski says. "It makes the pace feel a little less hectic and also, as a reporter, you tend to return to the same sources a lot. So it helps to have different people making calls" to diversify sources.

Still, The Post waited a while to report on the local economic impacts of Katrina because "we figured it would take a while for the effects to present themselves," Ostrowski says. "Even after waiting, I still heard from a lot of people that it was going to be a while before we felt the effects."

The key, reporters say, will be to follow up on the local economic consequences once experts have a firmer understanding of what they are -- which is likely to be months from now.

"Following up is something that newspapers aren't really good at," Ostrowski says, "but it seems like we're going to be feeling the effects of this storm for a while so we have no choice but to follow up on it."

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism