Monday, September 12, 2005
AC Unanchored
Great article in New York magazine about Anderson Cooper and his life. Below is an excerpt from the article about his covering the Hurricane Katrina aftermath:On Saturday, August 27, it became obvious to Anderson Cooper that Katrina was going to be a very big storm and a very big story. So he cut short his vacation in Croatia, got on a plane to New York, and then headed south.
He landed in Baton Rouge on Sunday night and rented an SUV with plans to drive to New Orleans, but he was a few hours too late—the storm had already begun to pummel the city. He decided to wait for the hurricane to come to him, and then weathered it on the air as it slowly exited the Gulf Coast and churned northward.
Over the next day or two, largely cut off from his producers in New York, he struggled to figure out where he should go. By Tuesday night, he was anchoring his show on CNN, Anderson Cooper 360°, from Gulfport, Mississippi, standing in front of a giant floating casino that had washed inland. The next day, he went to some of the hardest-hit towns in that state: Bay St. Louis and Waveland. By the time I finally am able to get through to him on a satellite phone, it is Friday, though he doesn’t seem to know what day it is. At this point, he has been in the field for more than 100 hours, gotten into an on-air tussle with a senator, and been hailed by some as a model of what a television journalist should be. As I talk to him, he is sitting on what used to be someone’s front yard in Waveland, an antique-toy-car collection scattered all over the ground around him. He is a stew of emotion: dejection, regret, sadness, anger. “I was really affected by the bodies,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’ve seen a lot dead bodies before, and I’m not sure why these dead bodies affected me so much, but I sort of haven’t been able to stop thinking about them.”
When I ask what his life has been like for the past few days, he says, “I’m fine.” Long pause. “It’s a horrible story to cover.” Another long pause. “Frankly, I feel privileged to be here. I’m really . . . I don’t want to leave . . . Um . . . ” He starts to cry. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m going to have to call you back in a second.”
Read the full article HERE.
# posted by ATN @ 4:26 PM 
