(From The Kansas City Star -- By Aaron Barnhart)
Ever since DAN RATHER put his body between HURRICANE CARLA and mainland GALVESTON, TEXAS, in 1961, TELEVISION and MOTHER NATURE have enjoyed a tempestuous, but fruitful, relationship.
But with Monday's all-day coverage of HURRICANE KATRINA, it appears severe weather has a new suitor -- THE INTERNET.
No longer is it a novelty for A TV REPORTER to stand in the fury of a hurricane, telling the viewers what they already know. It's become more like a ritual, something viewers demand, even if the video from the latest megastorm is no different than the last. Only the locations and color of the rain parkas seem to change.
But as TV cameras struggled to capture video of the rare CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE, NEWS WEB SITES and AMATEUR BLOGS offered snapshots and analysis of KATRINA that were arguably better.
Millions flocked to them with MSNBC.COM reporting an all-time record for streaming video requests -- nearly 6 MILLION by mid-afternoon Monday.
Meanwhile, when KATRINA slammed into THE GULF COAST a number of TV journalists couldn't make their standups. CNN's live truck, HURRICANE ONE, was damaged and couldn't send out live video. A FOX NEWS REPORTER had to stay holed up in his hotel because it was too dangerous to venture outside.
NBC's BRIAN WILLIAMS and his crew tucked themselves inside THE NEW ORLEANS SUPERDOME with thousands of other non-evacuees. They got an enviable perspective on the morning's biggest story -- interior shots of the holes that KATRINA had torn into its roof.
Later, on the NBC NIGHTLY NEWS, Williams had tape of KATRINA at full force pounding on THE SUPERDOME's ROOF. "It sounded like A NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY TRAIN," Williams observed on the newscast, which he anchored outside under a calm sky.
The powerhouse CBS affiliate in NEW ORLEANS, WWL, delivered a commendable amount of content, including one of the day's most
eye-opening clips -- a man being rescued from his car after foolishly driving into deep water.
By contrast, TV coverage seemed actually worse this time. Some of this was beyond the networks' control.
Still, anyone with Internet access had little reason to turn on the TV, except if they needed to see FOX's STEVE HARRIGAN, CNN's ANDERSON COOPER or THE WEATHER CHANNEL's JEFF MORROW doing standups in the mother of all rinse cycles. A number of blogs like LostRemote.com and TVNewser.com were keeping track of cable news coverage all day, and even had links to the key video streams.
Just as it did with BLOGGERS during the 2004 CAMPAIGN, CNN tried to
co-opt THE NET. It aired camera-phone shots emailed by amateurs in a segment pompously entitled CITIZEN JOURNALISTS.
One problem -- because television offers a lower-resolution picture than a computer screen, the pictures looked awful. If DARYN KAGAN hadn't said we were looking at a picture of the hole in THE SUPERDOME, we might have mistaken it for a UFO, or BIG FOOT at night.
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