The Daily Nightly began on May 31, 2005. As Brian wrote in his first post it aims to provide a narrative of the broadcast day and a window into the editorial process at NBC Nightly News. Brian weighs in every weekday and NBC News correspondents and producers post regularly.
Brian Williams became the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004. Read his full biography.
 |
|
 |
|
 |
advertisement
About the broadcast | Biographies
RSS is an easy way to get the news you want as it is updated even if you are not on MSNBC.com. More information about MSNBC.com's RSS feeds.
Podcasting brings you audio and video from each weekday broadcast on your iPod or other portable MP3 player anytime, anywhere. More information about MSNBC.com's podcasts.
Sign-up for our daily e-mail newsletter. It offers a preview of the stories and special reports featured on each weekday broadcast.
In year's past, the beginning of hurricane season would be just a passing mention in most of the Gulf Coast region, perhaps just a sentence at the end of a weather report, an "Oh, by the way, do you know what today is?" kind of thing. But that was before Katrina. She changed everything.
Nowadays, with the flipping of the calendar page to June the collective tension in the area has risen. Instead of typical summertime talk of vacations and backyard barbecues, you're more likely to hear about evacuation plans and survival kits. No one wants to be caught unprepared.
Discuss (5 comments) 
Email this | 
Link to thisJust nine months after Katrina, yet another hurricane season starts today. Is the region ready? We'll have reports from Florida to Texas... and tell you about some of the ominous warnings officials have already voiced. Brian reports again tonight from New Orleans.
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight will find us in Orleans Parish, along the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. The backdrop for our live broadcast is a lot like the mantra here: Katrina might as well have been yesterday. There has been no attempt to clean up the wreckage, still fresh, that you will see behind us at our camera location.
In tonight's broadcast: the long-delayed U.S. opening to Iran... David Gregory will head up our reporting. Also today, the president commented for the first time about the killings at Haditha in Iraq. Martin Savidge will join me here for a status report heading into tomorrow's first day of hurricane season. I will speak with New Orleans native Walter Isaacson on the recovery effort and we'll report on Lance Armstrong's news today.
I saw Harry Shearer at today's event. Harry, a great and talented entertainer and writer is also a veteran blogger. He has had his issues with our coverage in the past (on one issue in particular involving the initial construction of the levees) and so we will interview him tomorrow and include his comments in our coverage of the status of the levee and pump repairs going on here.
Special thanks to the folks at Tulane University (the largest employer in this city) for hosting me today as part of a day-long seminar on the lessons learned and the future direction of civic planning and re-building in this city post-Katrina. I was deeply honored to be the latest recipient of the president's medal -- awarded by the entirely too generous President of Tulane, Scott Cowen. I apparently now hold one of only 10 such medals ever awarded -- and I tried to explain that those most deserving of this honor are those we will probably never meet: the Coast Guard chopper pilots, the women who kept the babies alive inside Charity Hospital, the volunteers and public servants of every stripe, who stayed on the job to lift this city out of a nightmare. Having said that, it was a humbling day at Tulane.
Discuss (17 comments) Email this | Link to thisThe National Hurricane Center predicts another above-average season beginning June 1 and running through the end of November. Correspondent Kerry Sanders will report the story tonight on the broadcast, but here are the highlights: For the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA predicts 13-16 named storms, with 8-10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher.
Compare this year's forecast to last year's record-breaking year, which saw 28 named storms (seven more than predicted), 15 hurricanes (four more than predicted), and the seven major hurricanes (which fell in the range of what the Hurricane Center had predicted). Four of those major storms hit the U.S.
Discuss (0 comments) Email this | Link to thisFive names from the 2005 hurricane season were retired from use today by an international hurricane committee of the World Meteorological Organization. Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma will never be used again. Storm names are "recycled" every six hurricane seasons.
Hurricane names are traditionally retired out of respect for devastated communities when the storms cause a large loss of life and property. The WMO has retired 67 names since 1953 when storms were first named. This is the highest number of storms that have been retired in one season. The new storm names with the same letter as the retired storms will be: Don, Katia, Rina, Sean and Whitney.
Discuss (10 comments) Email this | Link to thisAs the regular readers know, Brian is deeply committed to his blog. I will try to keep posting in his absence... but you will have to forgive me if the commentary lacks his wit and wisdom. Brian and his family remain much in our thoughts this week.
Leaving New Orleans this morning... the city was silent. Not a soul on the streets of the French Quarter. No doubt, much of New Orleans is sleeping it off today. On the streets around our hotel and along Canal and St. Charles... nothing but crushed cups and scattered beads. Growing up in Louisiana... I remember being a little girl at Mardi Gras... and how on Wednesday it abruptly all came to an end. The sanitation workers would hit the streets late Tuesday and work all through the night so that, by the time people headed out to work and Ash Wednesday mass, there were only a few remnants of the blow out Mardi Gras day bash.
Discuss (6 comments) Email this | Link to thisEditor's note: Donna Gregory is on assignment in New Orleans for MSNBC-TV.
NEW ORLEANS - Tragicomedy is the right word for it. It's the feeling of that first holiday you spend after a loved one dies. There's music, special food, celebration and sadness. Sadness for those who've been lost. Sadness for those who can't come back. And here, a sadness for the loss of innocence that comes with the realization that the party didn't last forever.
Discuss (1 comments) Email this | Link to thisFrom the outside it looks like the most free-form, free-floating party in America, but don't let appearances fool you -- the *real* Mardi Gras has special rules, strange customs and a language all its own. Here's a brief vocabulary lesson:
Krewes -- Krewes are the leaders of New Orleans' society, and they ride floats, throw balls and hold other events during the season. They often wear masks to keep their identity secret -- a tradition dating back to Roman times.
Rex -- Every parade has a king, but there is only one king of carnival, and that is "Rex." Rex's parade is the climax of Mardi Gras.
Discuss (2 comments) Email this | Link to thisWaveland, Miss. is an amazing place, but these days it's for all the wrong reasons. The destruction from Hurricane Katrina's storm surge left behind scenes of destruction that are spellbinding. I have been there several times over the course of the past five months and each time I see a new depth of the devastation.
So the question becomes: Where do you begin when you have to start over? Our story tonight looks at what the community chose to fix first... A hospital? A fire station? A Home? No...
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisI wrote the following for broadcast tonight. We have omitted the names from the e-mails, and they are just a representative sample of what we receive every day:
A necessary word about our coverage of the storm zone— specifically, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the City of New Orleans. Lately, a lot of viewers have felt the need to tell us what they think of our coverage, and we like that and we read them all. And while most of the e-mails we get are from folks wanting to thank us for our coverage, an increasing number do not.
Here are just a few from the past few days:
A viewer in Houston writes, “I was very saddened by the damage caused by the hurricane and certainly support the re-building of New Orleans... but can’t we give this a rest?”
Another viewer writes: “I’m getting just plain sick and tired of hearing the constant drumbeat about New Orleans...”
Discuss (293 comments) Email this | Link to this
