By Chuck Alexander

Editor in chief

For New York Times reporter Adam Nossiter, the images of the first week after Hurricane Katrina will not go away anytime soon.

“The country will be affected by them for a long time,” Nossiter said.

Nossiter, who spoke to a group of approximately 30 students Tuesday in the Danna Center, described his role as a journalist covering the storm and its aftermath for the Associated Press as being in “the fog of war.”

Nossiter, who got around primarily by boat, said it was hard seeing what was happening to the city he called home.

“It was difficult,” Nossiter said. “All the normal societal bonds were breaking down.”

Nossiter said he was lucky to have been a journalist because it enabled him to actually see what was going on in the city.

“I felt the job was all the more important,” Nossiter said. “The minute [I] walked into the hotel, guests crowded around to hear any news.”

While he considers Katrina to be his most difficult story, at least physically, that he has ever reported on, Nossiter said that it was easy to write about.

“I had a much deeper sense of engagement,” Nossiter said. “For me it was much more than a story.”

Nossiter stressed the importance of continued coverage in areas many people feel may have been overdone in the media, like the Lower Ninth Ward.

“There’s a continued need to communicate to the outside world that there are thousands of people here who are still in bad shape,” Nossiter said. “It’s vital that we communicate the suffering of these people to the rest of the world.”

In order to hone their reporting skills, Nossiter urged the student journalists in attendance to seek out smaller, independently owned newspapers at the beginning of their careers, such as he did when he took his first reporting job at the Anniston Star in Anniston, Ala. He stressed the paper’s importance was due to their tendency to show a greater interest in the community – something Nossiter said was an asset in his post-Katrina work.

Nossiter credits his father Bernard Nossiter, a former Washington Post correspondent, for his love of journalism and for teaching him to write clearly and with a sharp focus; he also added that his father taught him to challenge authority and to be suspicious but not cynical.

“It’s bad for a journalist to be too cynical,” Nossiter said. “It’s a privilege to be paid to write.”

Chuck Alexander can be reached at [email protected].