"Painting the story with people" Charlie Mitchell, executive editor of the Vicksburg Evening Post and syndicated columnist chats with a resident in the Lakeshore area of New Orleans.  Photo by Tom Clarkson. Back to Features

Noted newspaperman works to craft picture of recovery/team
By Tom Clarkson, Public Affairs, Louisiana Recovery Field Office   July 23, 2007

NEW ORLEANS, LA .. A Pulitzer nominee, former president of the Mississippi Press Association, past president of the Mississippi/Louisiana Associated Press Managing Editors Association, award-winning syndicated columnist and advisory councilman for multiple college and university journalism schools, for two recent days he was, once again, just a reporter trying to get to the heart of the story.

Charlie Mitchell, the soft spoken executive editor of the Vicksburg Post still has a good eye – and ear – for news.  

Timely involvement and keen perceptiveness of what is newsworthy is old hat to the likes of the man who recently was accorded four First Place Awards from the Mississippi Press Association.  One of these accolades was for his series of stories resulting from his visit to Iraq in which he was embedded for some time with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Division.  

Now, again, but in tamer environs, he once again trudged with Corps members.  This time it was through the lingering devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the ensuing flooding which ravaged much of New Orleans.  

The Corps has not been setting on their thumbs.  To date nearly 29,000,000 cubic yards of debris has been hauled away.  To put that in perspective, that’s enough to fill 7-8 of New York City’s Empire State Buildings.  And of that, 927,577 cubic yards has been Regulated Asbestos Containing Material (RACM).

That, in fact, was the next visit in Mitchell’s tour - to observe a “burrito wrap” of asbestos hazmat resulting from a demolished structure.

He talked with an array of on-scene professionals who described the careful procedures -replicated scores of times each week - and watched the “hot zone” in which the debris truck bed interior, encased in six millimeter plastic, was filled by a crew wearing special RACM suits and respirators.

He was informed that 927,577 cubic yards of RACM debris has been removed from the storm ravaged Southern Louisiana area.

The journalist’s quiet, slow drawl could not conceal his fast-paced work schedule – fourteen interviews on his first twelve hour plus day, several of which were with professionals from his home turf, the Vicksburg District headquartered in Vicksburg, Miss. 

He met with Corps members – on temporary assignment from Corps organizations from all over the country - street side at hot and humid private property debris locations.  He scoured mission recollections of Mike Smith, former deputy director now director of the Louisiana Field Recovery Office team on the third floor of the Federal Reserve Bank.  Back in the “field’, he talked with rehired annuitants who had volunteered to come out of retirement to help in this massive undertaking.

The next day, at the New Orleans District Lake Shore Office, but a few yards from Lake Pontchartrain, he surgically dissected the memories of those who had lived and labored through the disaster ordeal.  Then, “back to the action”, he toured levees and canals striving to better piece together for his readership what was happening in this monstrous and challenging rebuilding effort.   

As his pace wound down, Mitchell incisively observed that many, outside of the Crescent City, simply did not understood the magnitude of the devastation wrought upon New Orleans. 

He perceptively reflected, “The most frequent post-storm refrain was, ‘You have to see it in person to believe it.’ Well, because that's impossible, it becomes incumbent on those writing and talking about it to have first-person experiences and to listen to those involved on a daily basis. In turn, the press may still not be able adequately to convey to scope of the Katrina and the recovery, but it sure helps.” 

It was abundantly clear that he recognized how the correct and complete story needs to be told.

Shortly thereafter, with impressions freshly pixilated in his camera, through sheets of notes taken and sensitively scored within his own awareness, he returned home with a self imposed mission to try to do just that.