Hell on Earth: Haiti Coverage

The Haiti earthquake’s aftermath is so horrible that an anecdote like this, which would be the tragic center point for virtually any other kind of story in the NYT, barely registers until you read it over again (“Looting Flares Where Authority Breaks Down “):

“We are all in a bad way,” said Margaret Cherubin, 41, a merchant who lost her husband, Jimmy, and three children in the earthquake. She said she was afraid to return to work because of her fear of thieves. “I have no family, just the clothing on my back,” she said. “I now live with God only.”

The closing anecdote ends up being even more horrific.

NYT photog Damon Winter, in this Q&A on the Lens blog, talks about one moment that didn’t get captured on camera:

There was one thing that didn’t really make pictures. It was my first night here last night. We were staying at a hotel on the edge of a pretty heavily damaged neighborhood and at night, you could hear people singing.

People are out on the street at night. It’s really hard to photograph because there’s no electricity. It’s pitch black. But all night you could hear them singing prayers. It’s pretty amazing the ways that people are dealing with this tragedy. It says a lot about the Haitian character. They are an amazing people.

I'm a programmer journalist, currently teaching computational journalism at Stanford University. I'm trying to do my new blogging at blog.danwin.com.