'Times-Pic' Editor Comments on Arrest of Photographer

By: Joe Strupp Peter Kovacs, one of two managing editors at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, received a phone call at home last night at about 8:30 p.m. Staffers back at the office informed him that one of paper's key photographers in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, John McCusker, had been arrested after a police car chase. "I was on the phone with people at the paper about it all night," he told E&P, "through the deadline period of about 11 p.m."

Kovacs would learn that McCusker, still suffering from the trauma of experiencing, and covering, the hurricane's effects, had begged cops to kill him, in a "suicide-by-cop" attempt, as police called it.

With Editor Jim Amoss out on vacation, Kovacs and others at the paper had to deal with both covering the event as a news story and helping McCusker, who is also known locally as a jazz expert and tour guide. Kovacs said Page One Editor Terry Baquet went to the scene, but offered few other details of the paper's involvement.

"I think [McCusker] was still there when Terry got there," Kovacs said. "I think he saw him, but I can?t recall the details." Baquet could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kovacs would not comment on McCusker's personal or emotional problems. The Times-Picayune story on the incident noted that McCusker had been distraught over being unable to afford repairs to his hurricane-damaged home. "I can?t really be in a position to discuss what problems he had outside of the story," he told E&P.

Kovacs said McCusker was not on duty when the arrest occurred, but had been on the job as usual in recent weeks. "He had been a regular member of the photo staff," he said.

When asked what the reaction at the paper had been to the incident, Kovacs said, "People are hoping John gets well." He added that "people are anxious to help him and the family, but it is a little early to know exactly what he needs."

The paper's account of the arrest was published above the fold on the front of the local section, Kovacs said. It did not mention McCusker's ties to the paper until the second paragraph, noting him only as a New Orleans man in the headline and lead. "We were going to say who he was," Kovacs noted about the approach to the story. "I can't speak to why the editor involved decided to put it in the second paragraph."

During the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning post-Katrina coverage, McCusker played a major role in the photo department's work, Kovacs noted. He said that after the paper's staff evacuated its New Orleans offices and crossed the river out of town, McCusker was among the staffers who volunteered to return to the city.

"I think he may have been the only photographer to go back in from that [initial] group," said Kovacs, who added that other photographers were in the city, but arrived from other locations.

McCusker recently told a group of visiting students from Brown University, "Katrina didn't flood New Orleans - government failure did."

He is a graduate of local Loyola University and worked on the paper there. He wrote articles for the Times-Picayune several years ago, often wrote about jazz, including a three-part series in 1993.

A Boston Globe story about his Saturday morning jazz tours in 2002 noted that he had started doing that about five years earlier, feeling that tourists did not really know the background there. To that end he drove them all over the city, playing CDs, and showing off, for example, Jelly Roll Morton's house and a club where Louis Armstrong performed.

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Related E&P story:

-- Photographer for 'Times-Pic' Arrested As He Begs Cops to Kill Him

-- In Radio Interview, Troubled 'Times-Pic' Photographer Detailed Katrina Aftermath