Wall Street Journal's Aaron Lucchetti '96 to Discuss 'Covering Katrina,' February 9
February 1, 2006
February 1, 2006, Greencastle, Ind. - Aaron Lucchetti, staff reporter of the Wall Street Journal and a 1996 graduate of DePauw University, will return to his alma mater Thursday, February 9, to discuss "Covering Katrina." The program, which begins at 4:15 p.m. in Watson Forum of the Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media, is presented by The Gertrude and G.D. Crain Jr. Lecture Series. The event is free and open to all.
"For the past two days, an unsteady line of buses has converged just west of New Orleans to shuttle flood victims to emergency shelters in Texas and Louisiana," Lucchetti wrote in the September 5 edition of the Journal from the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina. "But the wheels were outnumbered by the suffering. What began here -- underneath the Causeway Blvd. bridge on Interstate 10 -- as a throng of a few hundred victims on Wednesday grew by sunset to more than 1,000. With each passing minute, the masses -- many dehydrated and 
exhausted from three days of deteriorating conditions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- grew more irritable."
One of many entries Lucchetti filed from the Southeast, this "Reporter's Notebook" column focused on Michael Scanlon Jr., a 30-year-old sergeant in the Louisiana National Guard, who worked to keep order and, at the same time, delivered help and compassion to victims of Katrina. "A native of Denham Springs, La., Sgt. Scanlon has been in the National Guard since he was 17 years old, doing stints helping victims of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and serving as a prison guard in Guantanamo Bay prison camp in 2002," Lucchetti wrote. "He worked as a campus policeman at Louisiana State University until he hurt his back. Now he installs air conditioners. 'It's worse working down here,' he says. 'With Guantanamo, at least there's some reason people are down there. These are all innocent people.'"
A graduate of DePauw's Media Fellows Program, Aaron Lucchetti was editor of the student newspaper, The DePauw, and spent two weeks working with an editor from the Wall Street Journal who came to 
campus as a Kilgore Counselor. The visitor encouraged Lucchetti to apply for an internship at the Journal, and the rest is history. After covering the auto industry in Detroit for as part of his Journal internship, Lucchetti enrolled in a graduate journalism program at Northwestern University. A scant two weeks later, the newspaper called him back with a job offer. His byline appears regularly in the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times featured him as one of "30 Reporters Under 30."
Endowed by Rance Crain, president of Crain Communications and a member of DePauw's Class of 1960, The Gertrude and G.D. Crain Jr. Lecture Series honors Mr. Crain's parents. Previous Crain 
Lecturers have included: award-winning reporter Jerry Mitchell and civil rights activist Rita Bender, the widow of slain civil rights worker Michael Schwerner; Adam Clymer, retired chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times; Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide; Emily Wax, Africa Bureau Chief of the Washington Post, and her husband, Raymond Thibodeaux, who also covers the region for Cox News, Voice of America and the Boston Globe; Father Richard P. McBrien, Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and a consultant to ABC News for papal events; political analyst Charlie Cook; FactCheck.org director Brooks Jackson; veteran political columnist Jack Germond; military sociologist Charles Moskos (seen in photo at right); historian Douglas Brinkley, author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War; David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; and Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean's presidential campaign.