Lecture: Joshua Norman
Joshua Norman speaking at NYU. Photo: Megan Thompson.
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Reporter Joshua Norman hadn’t planned on staying in Mississippi on August 30, 2005 to witness the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. After tossing a few choice mementos in a bag, Norman and a fellow reporter from the Biloxi Sun Herald were preparing to head east to escape the storm. But a quick pit stop at the newspaper changed their course drastically. “We got wind that there were just two or three [employees] staying,” said Norman. “It took us about five minutes to talk about it and we decided to stay.”
Under the guidance of Editor Stan Tiner, the small group of reporters who opted to remain at the paper worked tirelessly to ensure that the Sun Herald never missed an edition, despite the damage wrought by the devastating storm. Their efforts did not go unnoticed. In May 2006, the group received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Tiner and Norman came together at NYU’s Kimmel Center on October 3, 2006 to describe their experience to a group of journalism students and faculty members. “The storm was a surprise on all fronts,” Norman told the audience. “We had no idea it was coming; we had no idea it would be this big … and we had no idea that we would receive the kind of the recognition we did for the work we did.”
During their lecture, Norman and Tiner painted vivid images of the devastation caused by the mammoth storm. Some stories were comical. The crowd giggled as Tiner described having the porta-potty he sat in forklifted off the ground while he was still “otherwise engaged.” Others were tragic, like the one about a woman who lost her husband and newborn on the same day. But the overarching message of the lecture was not one of sadness, or anger, or even laughter in the face of adversity; it was a testimony to the power of journalism. “I became a journalist because I knew that it had given my dad a means to support his family,” Norman said, referring to his father Michael Norman, an NYU professor and former New York Times columnist, who sat proudly in the audience. “I felt like it was something that I could do and maybe it would be enjoyable. But I didn’t really believe that it could do good. That changed with Katrina.”
By covering Katrina, Norman felt he was making a real contribution to the recovery of his community, but practicing journalism under these conditions wasn’t without its difficulties. One of the problems Norman faced was how to balance his role as a journalist with his role as a fellow survivor. “It was overwhelming,” he said. “You wanted, on one hand, to help that guy dig through rubble to pull out baby photos, but on the other hand, you had to write a story about it.” His instinct was to prioritize helping people over his duties as a reporter, but that wasn’t always possible. Ultimately, Norman determined that he had a better chance of helping people by relaying their stories than by personally lending a hand.
Norman learned firsthand how his stories were directly influencing the lives of his readers. After the storm, he received a call from a woman who began crying when he answered the phone. She had read an article in which the reporter had quoted a man he’d met on the street. The man was her father and Norman’s story was the first news she’d had of him since Katrina hit. This was the moment when Norman realized how the paper could be a connecting force in the community. “It made me realize that … there is still good to be done with journalism,” he said.
During the video presentation that brought the lecture to a close, the audience fell silent and the room was filled with the somber tone of Bruce Springsteen singing “My City of Ruins.” Images of the destruction wrought by Katrina were projected on to a large screen above the stage. The boarded up windows, the empty streets and my brother down on his knees, crooned Springsteen as a picture of Mississippi’s once thriving waterfront was replaced by a shot of the shoreline casinos leveled by the storm. But the presentation ended on a positive note. As the final strains of Springsteen’s ballad played — Come on, rise up — the screen flashed pictures of reunited families embracing and taking the first steps towards recovery.