Media Evolution – Hear the Roar

 The following is a letter from Steve Buttry, editor of The Gazette in flooded Cedar Rapids IA. 

The staffs of The Gazette and KCRG have been overwhelmed with the generous and unsolicited help and offers  to help from our news media colleagues as we continue to publish and broadcast on all platforms through the flooding disaster in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. We were especially overwhelmed by the truckload of bottled water, cots, fruit and other donations from the Dubuque Telegraph Herald. I want to seek your help in a more personal way: Several Gazette Communications employees have had their homes and personal belongings destroyed or severely damaged in the floods. We are sure that other news media employees in Waterloo, Iowa City and smaller towns in the flood zone face the same kinds of personal losses. 

You can send tax-deductible checks to Iowa Media Employees Disaster Relief Fund at Iowa Newspaper Foundation, 319 E. 5th St., Des Moines, IA 50309. 

Click HERE to donate online.

You can’t get flood insurance unless you live in the 100-year flood plain and this flood went beyond the 500-year flood plain, so we truly are looking at a disaster of millennial proportions, with much of the damage uninsured. And we are only now getting our first glimpses of the devastation in some homes. While we know victims will receive FEMA assistance, we also know that is not enough. We will take steps to ensure that any aid we collect is used only for legitimate flood damage beyond any reimbursement from insurance, FEMA or other public assistance. We are grateful that this has not been as catastrophic as what our colleagues along the Gulf Coast experience when Katrina hit in 2005. But we want you to know that colleagues in the news media are hurting and we hope you can help. And, of course, many others in our communities are hurting and we encourage you to contribute to community relief efforts as well. You can find information about those contributions at our web sites.

The Iowa Newspaper Foundation also will assemble two databases, one of the needs of newspapers affected by the flood and one of resources offered by other newspapers.

I can assure you that I will not benefit in any way from your assistance. I am fortunate to be high and dry in a hotel (Mimi and I are scheduled to close this week on a condo that is out of the flood zone). 

If you haven’t already done so, please follow our disaster coverage at GazetteOnline and KCRG.com. I couldn’t be prouder of our staff and their performance.

Thanks for any help you can provide,

Steve

Steve Buttry

Editor

The Gazette and GazetteOnline

(319) 398-5815