Still covering Katrina's effects on consumers

Kim Quillen, the business editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, sends the paper’s Sunday business front (see below), which features a story about the rising cost of homeowners insurance in the area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Quillen wrote, “Business reporter Rebecca Mowbray has covered the tumultuous post-Hurricane Katrina insurance market for us for the past two years. Her latest story, published on our Sunday front, examines the financial impact of soaring insurance premiums on local homeowners, particularly those with fixed incomes.Â

“Rebecca did quite a bit of legwork and came up with several individuals who were willing to share both their stories and their personal financial information with us. We really wanted to play up the human impact of the insurance crunch, so designer Charles Chauff put together a page that featured large portraits of two of the individuals in the story.

“He also pulled out the pre- and post-Katrina insurance costs both were facing and ran them as a large graphic that really drove home the degree to which rates have climbed.

“We also had a story Sunday about these massive signs that went up around town last week when the city was hosting the NBA All-Star game. The signs, which were put up by sponsors of the game and in some cases flanked entire sides of buildings, quickly became the talk of the town. And business reporter Jaquetta White did a story on the local vendors that were called in to produce the signs. Our photography department came back with a great picture of one of the signs, a picture so good that we pushed that story and photograph towards the top of our section front as well.Â

 “The bottom of the page carried a feature on a new job center and our popular question-and-answer column, which deals with post-Katrina financial issues.”

A pdf where you can see the detail of the page is here.