Live Large, Spend Big In the Big Easy In May
In May, most of the cable industry will be in New Orleans for The Cable Show, presumably pouring dollars into local coffers. The Big Easy still very much needs the help.
Even though Louisiana is aggressively trying to bolster its economy by fostering arts and culture, the state is looking for an assist from Washington as it struggles to recover from Hurricane Katrina’s devastating hit in 2005.
“We believe that Katrina made New Orleans more like itself, that in fact it just kind of put a mirror—or a spotlight—on all our splendor and all our despair,” Louisiana Lieutenant Gov. Mitch Landrieu told a room packed with the media, yours truly included, during a press conference Tuesday at Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.
The lieutenant governor, flanked by Emmy-winning actress [and New Orleans native] Patricia Clarkson, was in the Big Apple to discuss his office’s Cultural Economy Initiative, the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation and the World Cultural Economic Forum.
In a nutshell, the state is trying to take a systematic approach the uses legislation, policy and public and private partnerships to proactively foster “the cultural economy.” As Landrieu explained it, the arts—from music to historic preservation to culinary wizardry—are big business in Louisiana, and they need careful, organized nurturing post-Katrina.
“The front-of-the-house-side of what we’re doing is up and operating,” Landrieu said, citing venues like the Ernest L. Morial Convention Center, the scene of so much horror after Katrina and the site of The Cable Show this year.
But Landrieu went to say, “The rest of America, I think, perhaps intellectually understands this—but doesn’t fully get—the federal commitment that’s going to be required to rebuild this great American City.”
New Orleans is a topic close to my heart. I traveled there just three months after killer Katrina to do one of several stories about Cox New Orleans’ noble efforts during and after the storm.
I saw with my own eyes the devastation, stood on the levee that had breached. And I’ve been back there several times since then chronicling the stellar work Cox regional vice president and general manager Greg Bicket and his amazing team has done as they repaired their system.
Landrieu told his New York City audience, situated high above Columbus Circle and miles away from the French Quarter and 9th Ward, that most Americans don’t understand the scope of the disaster that was Katrina.
“In New Orleans, what happened was everybody lost everything all at the same time,” Landrieu said.
Well, I understand that all too well. And I’m hoping The Cable Show, and the cable industry, will do NOLA well this spring.
