A Personal Look Inside Hurricane Coverage for The Asbury Park Press
Residents across New Jersey have been in a need-to-know state of mind over the past few weeks due to Hurricane Sandy and newspapers have been the main source of information. In the world of journalism, it is up to local staff writers to provide their very neighborhoods with such news.
Many daily newspapers across the east coast still update their readers on conditions in the surrounding areas. A prime example of this is The Asbury Park Press.
Gina Columbus, staff writer for The Asbury Park Press explained that many of the newspaper’s staff writers were not only journalists, but residents of the shore areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. Like many residents, Columbus could not go into work immediately following the storm, but that did not mean she wasn’t working. “They sent us out into the neighborhoods we were living in to take pictures. We used our phones since we didn’t have power and sent everything to our editors. They kind of understood,” said Columbus.
The first official assignment Columbus was given regarding the hurricane was at Brick Hospital. She covered the overflow of emergency patients and the mobile emergency unit. Still, Columbus said, The Asbury Park Press is mostly covering local updates on hurricane damage.
Anthony Panissidi, another staff writer for The Asbury Park Press covered stories such as the prediction of the storm and the damage that could be done and a story on The Red Cross as far as what they needed for donations and volunteers.
With no power after the storm, The Asbury Park Press was the major source of news for many local towns. Hurricane Sandy coverage was more urgent than hard news that the two alumnis cover every day. “Especially with a paper like APP we’re competing with smaller town papers. We’ve been doing our best to serve our public, serve our community,” said Columbus. She and the rest of the staff at APP have been updating Monmouth and Ocean County towns every day.
The most difficult thing about reporting on Hurricane Sandy was not the deadlines or power outages for Columbus. “The hardest part was trying to do a good job knowing that I lost my own house; dealing with that personally while making sure I was being a good reporter for the community and being dependable for the community, it’s still kind of a shock,” said Columbus. Her house sustained over four feet of flooding.
Panissidi, with a less emotional perspective, said that the hardest part about reporting on Sandy was talking to local residents who lost everything. “Even if you’re having a good day and you’re happy, you have to try to bring yourself down to earth and realize that the’re not having a good day,” said Panissidi.
Once reporters were able to leave their home towns, they were assigned shifts in other local towns for general storm coverage. Reporters worked in pairs to constantly update the latest news on Sandy. Columbus recalls one day where she had to provide updates for every single town in Monmouth and Ocean County. Along with condition updates the APP has also been covering volunteer work and citizens’ personal stories and experiences. “The headlines have been very emotional, like ‘how could this happen?’ and things like that,” said Columbus.
Panissidi said that covering the storm was different than other breaking news that he’s covered. “These were articles where there weren’t nosy, gossipy people looking to read them, it was something all real,” he said.
The Asbury Park Press has an online resource center titled Road to Recovery. The center on the home page of app.com offers assistance in areas such as town-by-town updates, rental information, emergency contacts, federal aid, insurance Q&A and other stories and images.
Most New Jersey residents were unable to turn on the television to find out what was happening so newspapers— especially on the online platform—heightened drastically in the amount of readers. “People were going to our website constantly,” said Columbus. “We had over a million views the week of the hurricane. People depended on us to know what was going on around them.”
Now that the power is on, cable is back and gas is readily available, stories of hurricane destruction have turned into stories of recovery and rebuilding. Newspapers such as the APP are still updating on the storm and they are available for readers.
PHOTO COURTESY of Gina Columbus
