Michael Lewis, the author of Liar's Poker and a number of other books, is both a New Orleans native and a writer for The New York Times Magazine, and he has filed a report from Uptown, where he and his wife rode out the storm at his sister's house:
One day someone is going to study the difference between our culture’s ability to process and respond to earthquakes (which strike without warning and so are of little use to cable news networks) and hurricanes (which might as well have been created with MSNBC in mind). The buildup, the uncertainty, the waiting — the narrative structure of hurricanes lends itself to melodrama. Click from the New Orleans local news — fairly sober analysis of the city’s chances, which the local weathermen concur are pretty good — to the cable news — where all bad news is actually good news, as it excites cable news viewers — and you get the feeling they are talking about different storms. New Orleans is safer from Gustav than it is from Geraldo.
There's more at the link, all very New York Times-ish.
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