If you think a motel parking lot in rural Alabama is a worse place to cover Hurricane Katrina than, say, a balcony overlooking historic Bourbon Street, then you are probably not a reporter for a cable news channel.
Dodging vinyl siding, kudzu, steeples, and cows as they blur across the screen in .04 seconds is more fun than a rodeo, but the real game is withstanding the mightiest gust. Keeping your feet while your cameraman gets blown over is worth big style points. Strangely, so is spotting some frightened, drenched local and asking the camera, “What kind of an idiot would be out in weather like this?”
