Emily Ramshaw
When your state is smacked head on by a hurricane, when coastal communities are nearly wiped off the map, when the fourth-largest city in America is submerged in floodwater, a great newsroom doesn’t think twice. It springs into action.
That’s what happened at The Texas Tribune and in other newsrooms throughout the state this weekend, when Hurricane Harvey — a storm our reporters had anxiously warned of for the last year — made landfall in Texas.
Before I go any further: Our journalists are largely based in Austin, which has been only mildly battered by the outer bands of Harvey. What we’re experiencing doesn’t compare to what journalists at places like the Houston Chronicle and Corpus Christi Caller-Times are experiencing. They’re providing an around-the-clock public service while picking through the remnants of their own homes, relocating their own families, and in some extreme cases, typing on their laptops upstairs while floodwaters rush into their ground floors.
But it’s been a surreal mix of the personal and professional for us all the same.
The Texas Tribune reporter pounding out a story on Sunday on the state’s official response to the hurricane hadn’t heard from his father — flooded out in Houston, and taking refuge with elderly neighbors on his second floor — for a few too many hours.
Our partnerships director, juggling endless interview requests from cable news networks and the logistics of getting our stories republished far and wide, had just lost much of her coastal hometown, and had moved several relatives — and their pets — into her Austin home.
The colleague who runs our audience-engagement efforts powered through with gritted teeth as her elderly and immovable father rode out the storm in a Houston-area hospital.
Our editor, whose parents are traveling internationally, had no way of knowing if his childhood home was underwater.
Like many journalists in Texas, virtually everyone in The Texas Tribune newsroom has a personal connection to this disaster, whether it’s a family home, a close friend or relative, a childhood vacation spot. And virtually everyone in our newsroom went straight to work this weekend, regardless of beat or job description. They’re a remarkable bunch, and I’m honored to work alongside them.