Could your timing be any worse?
Category: Hurricane Katrina... MSM/Journalism/etc...
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2005 at 08:49 AM [GMT-6]

I'm sure that the food section of the newspaper is the last place one might think would need some editorial discretion, and yet that seems to be precisely what is lacking in this morning's edition of the MRT

The five-column main story in our local newspaper is an AP story headlined "Diners line up to get into 100-year-old New Orleans bistro." It goes into great detail about Galatoire's restaurant, a Bourbon Street culinary landmark. I looked for context that would somehow make this story appropriate in light of Katrina's devastation of New Orleans, but found none. This was a simple case of poor timing.

In fact, I hope that the story was simply overlooked in the press of other things. I hope no one looked at it and made a conscious decision that, well, "New Orleans is in the news everywhere else, so this is a logical tie-in."

And, of course, I hope that Galatoire's will once again -- and soon -- be the legitimate subject of a story praising its cuisine and spotlighting the crowds that line up to partake of it.