Interdictor (blog)

Interdictor is the name of a LiveJournal blog that documented the effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans during and following the destruction. It is operated by Michael Barnett. At the time he was an employee of Directnic.com, an internet services company on the 10th and 11th floors of an office building in downtown New Orleans at 650 Poydras Avenue, which he referred to as "Outpost Crystal" (after Barnett's fiancee, Crystal Coleman). In the early aftermath of the hurricane and flooding, it was one of the few reliable communications links between downtown New Orleans and the rest of the world.Silberman, Steve. "Hurricane Heroics." "Wired". November 2005. [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/posts.html?pg=2] ]

Operating on a diesel generator when power was lost, Barnett and fellow bloggers provided a continuous stream of reports of what was actually happening and, through webcams, live video feeds, and thousands of high resolution pictures, gave the rest of the world a chance to see the looting and destruction firsthand before the rest of the media arrived on the scene. Using Internet Relay Chat and Instant Messenger they kept in constant contact with the outside world. The coverage provided by Interdictor was respected as a reasonably neutral and unbiased coverage from a firsthand source on the scene.Fact|date=February 2007

The Interdictor blog quickly became a widely recognized and cited source from inside New Orleans. Sources such as CNN even read directly from the blog on the air, putting its contents on-screen.Jardin, Xeni. "CNN Hacks New TV Technology." "Wired". 19 September 2005. [http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2005/09/68859] ] Even after the media arrived, the Interdictor blog was still commonly cited as a reference to the events ongoing in New Orleans. ["Top Ten Web Moments of 2005." DownloadSquad.com. 31 December 2005. [http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/12/31/top-10-web-moments-of-2005/] ] When a police-enforced evacuation of New Orleans was ordered by Mayor Ray Nagin, the Interdictor bloggers were exempted from the mandatory evacuation. Fact|date=February 2007 The blog's debut and rise to prominence during the hurricane and its aftermath was listed in an MSN/"PC World" article as number 14 on a list of "The 16 Greatest Moments in Web History." [Tynan, Dan. "The 16 Greatest Moments in Web History." "PC World". 2007. [http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=5586501&page=2] ]

Currently the blog is used by Barnett to discuss issues related to New Orleans specifically and politics generally. It has a distinctly libertarian slant as Barnett is a self-described Austrian School economist and a libertarian. ["Profile: Interdictor." LiveJournal. [http://interdictor.livejournal.com/profile] ]

ee also

*Gulfsails, another Katrina-related blog

References

External links

*http://mgno.com/ - Interdictor Journal
*http://ikilled007.livejournal.com - Interdictor's Personal Journal