Article on New Orleans market

[PelicanGuy 117]

This article from The Times-Picayune focuses on three current and former reporters, but at the end, it give a good summary of who's here,who's new, who's gone...and who's planning on leaving. It's the first of a series of articles on the market.

 

Homing signals

For local broadcast journalists, Hurricane Katrina provided an impetus to leave New Orleans, or a siren call to return -- or, for one TV news couple, both.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Dave Walker

 

New Orleans TV-news viewers just now returning from long evacuation treks are missing many familiar faces.

 

Gone are Karen Swensen, Ed Reams, Crystal Wicker, Susan Roesgen and many others.

 

In a city that worships its TV-news personalities and clings to their memories years after they've moved on to TelePrompTer Heaven, retirement or The Big Time -- hello, Hoda! -- nearly every local newscast has lost at least one, and in some cases several, high-profile reporters or anchors since Hurricane Katrina.

 

 

Each departure has a different reason, though ambition and concerns over quality-of-life issues seem to be a common factor in many.

 

The departed's replacements -- where the departed have been replaced -- are often brave newbies who've signed on as restoration chroniclers in a devastated city.

 

The comings and goings have created a news market that is every bit as fluid as its city of origin, a dynamic embodied in the experiences of three TV news people: WWL's Mike Ross, WVUE's Allison Braxton and WGNO's Meredith Mendez. One departed, one arrived, and one departed and then decided to return.

 

. . . . . . .

 

Mike Ross' Mandeville home suffered only minor damage in Hurricane Katrina. But when both of Ross' young children independently expressed their fears about the onset of this year's hurricane season, he and his wife knew they needed to put some distance between their family and the Gulf Coast.

 

Ross had worked at WWL-Channel 4 for 20 years, the last 10 as north shore correspondent.

 

His wife, Barbie, also worked at WWL, managing the electronic graphics that frame every newscast camera shot.

 

"I had never envisioned leaving," Ross said. "I was very happy. I thought I'd stay until I retired. But given how our kids were reacting, it was time to look around, so last April or May, I launched my first job search in 20 years."

 

It was, he said, "probably the most difficult professional and personal decision I've had to make."

 

Almost immediately, he got a nibble. Literally. His job interview was conducted on his prospective boss' salmon boat, and soon Ross was hired as evening-news anchor at KTUU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska.

 

"Alaska is quite a lifestyle change," said Ross, who grew up in the Great Lakes region but lived and worked in Louisiana most of his adult life.

 

Barbie isn't working outside the home, a decision made to smooth the transition for their children -- who, so far, appear to be doing fine. Ross' son, 11-year-old Jonathan, has swapped a passion for Little League baseball for snowboarding -- there's a ski hill just minutes from the new Ross home -- and his daughter, 4-year-old Amanda, is taking skiing lessons.

 

"My kids were both born and raised in New Orleans," Ross said. "They'd barely seen maybe a quarter-inch of snow. They're having a ball."

 

Ross said he and his brood miss Louisiana family -- he has an adult son from an earlier marriage who still lives here -- friends and food, and have followed the New Orleans Saints from afar.

 

Ross himself suffered a kidney stone attack on the night of his first anchor shift -- "one minor little bump in the road," he said -- but reports that his professional transition has otherwise gone smoothly.

 

"The people here are very much like the people in Louisiana," he said. "They'll embrace you and help you and give you the shirt off their back."

 

Though maybe not again until very late spring.

 

A snowfall of 2 feet shortly preceded Halloween. So Jonathan and Amanda Ross put on their costumes and parkas and went trick-or-treating.

 

"Everywhere you turn here, there are spectacular mountains and big fjords," Ross said. "My wife said that living here is like living on the National Geographic Channel."

 

. . . . . . .

 

A graduate of Cabrini High School and the University of New Orleans, Allison Braxton was an intern at WWL before hitting the TV news road.

 

She'd worked her way through Victoria, Texas, and Alexandria and had a reporting job in Chattanooga, Tenn., when Katrina struck. Her parents, Gentilly residents, evacuated there and lived with her for three months.

 

Early network Katrina coverage "was the hardest thing to watch ever in my life," Braxton said. "It was so painful. Everybody would come up and ask, 'Oh, is the water gone yet?' "

 

Her grandparents, residents of eastern New Orleans, evacuated late. There were unaccounted-for cousins. Braxton later learned that one cousin perished in a nursing home.

 

"The future, the unknowing, was really tough," she said.

 

A visit home for Mardi Gras -- during which time her grandmother, who had survived the evacuation, fell ill -- convinced Braxton she had to return to stay.

 

"I just wanted to come back home," she said. "I'd been gone for six years.

 

"I went to my news director. He knew the circumstances. He said, 'I've been wondering when you were going to come talk to me. I can't hold you back. This is something you need to do.' "

 

Through an old friend from WWL who'd since made the move over to WVUE, Braxton learned of a reporting vacancy on the station's morning newscast.

 

She now works from 3 a.m. to noon at WVUE, then spends the rest of her day helping restore her parents' home, which took on 6 feet of water, and her mother's business.

 

The house became habitable again a few weeks ago.

 

"Rent is so high," she said. "I moved back in. It's not easy, but it's the house I grew up in. You want to see the city come back, so you just do it."

 

Braxton's grandparents, she said, were the first to return to their block.

 

"A lot of people have given up on New Orleans, and New Orleans is not a place to give up on," she said. "I know this sounds really cheesy, but New Orleans is part of my soul."

 

. . . . . . .

 

Her Lakeview home destroyed by Katrina flooding, WGNO-Channel 26 reporter Meredith Mendez made one of the first high-profile departures from the city's TV-news scene.

 

A few weeks after the storm, she, her husband -- Leonel Mendez, at the time a photographer for WVUE-Channel 8 -- and their 3-year-old son relocated to the Washington, D.C., area and quickly became minor celebrities due to their status as Katrina evacuees.

 

In late November, Mendez (who was freelancing) and her husband (who'd been hired by a Washington station) were the cover story in "TV Week," the Washington Post's TV-listings supplement. The cover headline: "Winds of Change."

 

More importantly, they had family close by -- Meredith's mom lived in the area -- to help with child care, as well as help in the emotional recovery from losing all of their belongings to the storm that son Nicholas knew only as "the big bad wolf."

 

The move also unified a family that had been scattered by Katrina. WGNO's emergency post-storm outpost was a Baton Rouge TV station. WVUE's base camp was in Mobile, Ala.

 

"We had nowhere to bring our son back to" in New Orleans, Meredith said not long after her move to D.C. "We'd lost our home. All of our baby sitters were scattered around the country. We really didn't see any other options beyond finding new jobs and leaving."

 

As thousands of displaced locals know, you just don't shake New Orleans that easily.

 

Mendez knew it, too. She and Leonel had departed once before pre-K, for Tampa, Fla., only to return.

 

The couple returned to New Orleans from D.C. to muck through their ruined home, but that's not exactly the kind of activity to spark pangs or regrets.

 

A visit for Mardi Gras was a different story, however, and proved to be the first step in coming back for good.

 

"We came back to see the city and to spend some money in the city," Mendez said. "If we had not come back at Mardi Gras, maybe we would've felt a little different.

 

"We just missed New Orleans, bottom line. We missed the area. We missed our friends. We just decided we had to come back."

 

Mendez returned to WGNO in May, and is now the station's north shore correspondent. Leonel is a photographer for WWL.

 

"It was a tough decision after all we'd been through," she said. "My family thought we were nuts. My mom lived three blocks from us. My mom and my stepdad helped take care of our son during the transition.

 

"Not only did I go back to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, but I also stole her grandson away from her. It was a tough decision."

 

It was a decision made much easier by an invitation from her old employer.

 

"Bob Noonan called me," she said, "and said, 'I really want you to come back.'

 

"I think they all understood why I left. It felt really good that he still valued my work."

 

Mendez now lives on the north shore, well beyond, she hopes, the big bad wolf's reach.

 

"That was one of my ultimatums," she said. "We had to live above I-12."

 

Even from way up there, covering the recovery is a stirring new challenge.

 

"At least now," she said, "we're back and we're part of it."

[PelicanGuy 117]

Continued:

 

COMINGS AND GOINGS

 

Local TV-news exits and arrivals since Hurricane Katrina

 

WWL

Comings

-- Dawn Brown (weather)

-- Laura Buchtel (weather)

-- Scott Cody (sports)

-- Jeremy Eisenzopf (weather)

-- Katie Moore (reporter)

-- Doug Mouton (reporter)

-- Stacia Willson (reporter)

 

Goings

-- Josh McElveen (Vermont bureau reporter, New England Cable News Network)

-- Dave McNamara (moved to Phoenix with his wife, former WWL news director Sandy Breland)

-- John Gumm (meteorologist, WKRC-TV, Cincinnati)

-- Jennifer Huntley (personal reasons)

-- Mike Ross (evening anchor, KTUU-TV, Anchorage, Alaska)

-- Shauna Sanford (personal reasons)

-- Karen Swensen (morning and midday anchor, New England Cable News Network)

-- Thanh Truong (reporter, KUSA-TV, Denver)

 

WDSU

Comings

-- Taslin Alfonzo (anchor-reporter)

-- LaTonya Norton (anchor-reporter)

-- Damon Singleton (weather)

-- Ron Smiley (weather)

 

Goings

-- Stephanie Boswell (freelance)

-- Devin Fehely (WAGA-TV, Atlanta)

-- Alec Gifford (retired)

-- Ed Reams (news director, WHSV-TV, Harrisonburg, Va.)

-- Dan Thomas (meteorologist, WSMV-TV, Nashville, Tenn.)

 

WVUE

Comings

-- Allison Braxton (reporter)

-- Sandra Gonzalez (reporter)

-- Natasha Robin (reporter)

-- Kimberly Vaughn (weather)

-- Elizabeth Willis (reporter)

 

Goings

-- Kerry Cavanaugh (reporter, WBAL-TV, Baltimore)

-- Laura Shelton (freelance writer and producer for CBS News, New York)

-- Summer Jackson (on-air host for regional cable news network CLTV, Chicago)

-- Crystal Wicker (meteorologist, WRTV-TV, Indianapolis)

 

WGNO

Comings

-- Rick Barrett (reporter)

-- Sheldon Fox (reporter)

-- Cyndi Nguyen (reporter)

 

Goings

-- Susan Roesgen (reporter, CNN Gulf Coast Bureau)

-- Yunji de Nies (reporter, ABC NewsOne, Atlanta)

-- Dawn Ostrom (freelance)

[Oliverolang 41]

Great job with the article, karma for you!

[mattLAW 2]

Hey Pelicanguy,

Speaking of changes, have you noticed WWL is using new music for its newscasts? Do you have any info on the music?

matt.

[abric 157]

The new music is Always Worth Your Time (Battery v. 4).