Gustav Takes News Watch Off RNC

With Hurricane Gustav hitting the Gulf Coast, cable news networks on Labor Day morning diverted their attention from coverage of the opening night of the Republican National Convention. Rather than focusing on the GOP gathering in St. Paul, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News Channel had their cameras and correspondents on the ground in the region and in New Orleans, which was still recovering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Naturally, The Weather Channel was all over the developing story. Weather maps depicting the storm's swirling bands of rain/wind, meteorologists talking about Gustav's path and rising tides and correspondents assessing the strength of levees and how their performance could impact the city's future replaced what figured to be wall-to-wall commentary about presumptive GOP Presidential nominee and Sarah Palin, the Alaska Governor selected as his running mate. Appearances by President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in St. Paul were canceled and the GOP indicated that only "procedural" matters would occur at the RNC Monday. The news nets were forced to redeploy personnel and resources from St. Paul, after a quick tournaround from Denver, the site of last week's Democratic National Convention, to the Gulf Coast. If there was some good news, Gustav, which at one point had intensified to a category 4 hurricane, had been further downgraded to a category 2 -- winds of 110 miles per hour from a category 3, in which winds can sustain 115 miles per hour.