Chicago Tribune Editor Kristen McQueary’s Romanticized View of Paul Vallas’ Role in Post-Katrina New Orleans
On August 13, 2015, Chicago Tribune editor Kristen McQueary published an editorial in which she wished a “Hurricane Katrina” upon the city of Chicago.
A Katrina would force Chicago to “hit the reset button,” and that is why she was “praying for a real storm” to hit Chicago.
It should come as no surprise that she found herself in a storm as a result– a media storm publicly chastising her for her callousness. (See here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.)
The August 14, 2015, International Business Times reports on the Chicago Tribune’s initial efforts to quell the resulting swift and powerful negative media response:
After outrage broke out on Twitter, the Chicago Tribune quickly changed the headline of McQueary’s piece from “In Chicago, Wishing for a Hurricane Katrina” to ““Chicago, New Orleans, and Rebirth.” The article was also edited after its original publication to tone down some of the statements readers found most inflammatory. But the New Orleans Times-Picayune archived the original column, and all citations in this article come from the first release of McQueary’s op-ed.
The first link in this post is also to McQueary’s original column entitled, “In Chicago, Wishing for a Hurricane Katrina.”
In her original editorial, McQueary not only glamorizes Katrina’s destruction; she also Chicago Tribune Editor Kristen McQueary’s Romanticized View of Paul Vallas’ Role in Post-Katrina New Orleans | deutsch29:
