our friends in new orleans

It looks like our AAN friends, The Gambit, are out of commission for the rest of the year.
Up front, here at SFR, staff was asking me if we had an emergency plan for our paper in case of a natural disaster. I said we did. Guess I better think of one.
More on how the new orleans' media is coping here.
Also, glad I wasn't the only one appalled by Fox's coverage of the hurricane last night. Of course, what would one expect from Fox really? (oh, I don't know, something besides coverage of looting maybe?)
On a totally unrelated media story, The Seattle Weekly (also an AAN paper,) picked up the story from The Guardian about the proposed VVM/New Times chains. Seattle Weekly is owned by VVM. While it's laudable (or, perhaps, ethical, reasonable, required?) that Seattle Weekly report this story, it's crazy, to me, that they can't get a comment from their own freaking company about a story they are reporting on their own company. Talk about corporate. When a company that owns the newspaper won't comment to their own newspaper, that's about the time when I start wondering who I'm working for. Or maybe they've already asked and answered those questions. Or maybe I'm old-fashioned, quaint, naive and unreasonable. Nah.