On March 14, 2007, I was in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans with 8 Franciscan University of Steubenville students. We were on a Spring Break “Media Missionâ€? to the areas hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although a year and a half had gone by and much recovery and rebuilding work had been done along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans by individuals and organizations, the impact on the people and the area were still so evident.

We found just about everything in Mississippi and Louisiana - joy and sadness, hope and hopelessness, hearts of gold and hearts crying out to God. We’ve been able to share our personal stories with our friends and families. One of the stories is this short podcast about part of the trip as part of my occasional Endless Road Podcast series.

On a technical note, I was testing some new equipment which didn't achieve the quality level we prefer. But it did let us tell our story. (12:29)

Jim Coyle
CatholicMediaJournal.com

Through the magic of Internet communications, Tim Drake, Senior Writer for the National Catholic Register, was our Guest in the March 12 Church & Media class at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Tim talked with us about Catholic journalism, New Media, his experience blogging from 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, and his new blog, Pope2008.com - one of the RSS feeds featured on the right side of our website.

We recorded this 25-minute conversation as the first edition of the Catholic Media Journal Podcast.

Jim Coyle
CatholicMediaJournal.com