Katy Reckdahl

New Orleans

Writer and Reporter at Freelance

Editor at The Lens

Journalist in the shifting media sands of New Orleans.

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Articles

Big boots to fill

4 weeks ago | thelensnola.org | Katy Reckdahl

With about a week left until Mardi Gras, Anthony Hingle Jr. went to his parents’ house to finish a set of beaded pterodactyls. Using white plastic from a bleach bottle, he cut tiny zigzagged edges and placed the dinosaur teeth expertly into beaded mouths. Some New Orleans children, budding musicians, tap on pots and pans with spoons.
Explaining Jessie Hoffman

1 month ago | thelensnola.org | Katy Reckdahl

“Wait, what?” people said at the time, in 1996. They’d heard that police had arrested 18-year-old Jessie Hoffman, the quiet kid, who’d been quarterback at John F. Kennedy High School. And the crime he had been charged with was unspeakably bad. Hoffman did it. Even now, at age 46, as he faces execution by nitrogen gas Tuesday evening, his lawyers aren’t arguing about his guilt. Yet some people who knew Hoffman still can’t believe the kid they knew committed this act. They swear he’s innocent. He’s not.
The Lens Carnival Edition 2025

1 month ago | thelensnola.org | Katy Reckdahl

FOR THE SECOND YEAR, The Lens presents its Carnival Edition. Our reporters stayed on their beats, covered the ways that Carnival affects the way New Orleans works — and doesn’t work. by MIZANI BALLAt Carnival parades, New Orleanians say hello to strangers, tote wagons and folding chairs. But Mizani Ball reports that, along the St. Charles parade route, we most often watch alongside people who look like us.
Andrea Armstrong is a lawyer who fights for the rights of the incarcerated

2 months ago | washingtonpost.com | Katy Reckdahl

Next in PolicyFebruary 11, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. ESTSorry, a summary is not available for this article at this time. Please try again later. In 2005, while she was a student at Yale Law School, Andrea Armstrong chose a summer internship that brought her to Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, the site of a former plantation. There, she met Corey Williams, a man who had just been transferred from death row into the general prison following Atkins v.
After New Orleans’ Super Bowl makeover, some residents say: What about us?

2 months ago | staradvertiser.com | Rick Rojas |Katy Reckdahl

NEW ORLEANS >> Even if there weren’t Super Bowl banners hanging from lamp posts and signs plastered across recently erected security fences, it would still be obvious that New Orleans was gussying up for a reason. The pair of bridges that span the Mississippi River — and that will almost certainly feature prominently in the atmospheric shots of New Orleans on television this weekend — have been draped in $21 million worth of decorative lights.
Planting a flag in the Lower 9 'wilderness’

2 months ago | thelensnola.org | Katy Reckdahl

This story is one of five stories in The Lens’ Embracing Katrina Narratives project. For several years after the storm, Robert Green, Sr., now 69, lived in a FEMA trailer next to a big American flag, two grave markers, and a sign that read, “Root Run Deep Here.”Though family often stopped through, he was largely alone on his block.
Amid a wintry mess, New Orleans also savors a spectacle

Jan 22, 2025 | seattletimes.com | Katy Reckdahl |Rick Rojas |Kathleen Flynn

The snow canceled classes and made getting to work impossible, disrupting routines and causing an array of problems in New Orleans, where most people have little or no experience navigating wintry conditions. But amid the complications Wednesday, the winter storm made the landscape a dazzling spectacle. Snow coated roofs and parked cars; icicles dangled from porches. Some made sleds out of whatever they could find — trash bin lids, baking sheets, cardboard boxes.
Amid a Wintry Mess, New Orleans Also Savors a Spectacle

Jan 22, 2025 | nytimes.com | Rick Rojas |Katy Reckdahl |Kathleen Flynn

The snow canceled classes and made getting to work impossible, disrupting routines and causing an array of problems in New Orleans, where most people have little or no experience navigating wintry conditions. But amid the complications on Wednesday, the winter storm made the landscape a dazzling spectacle. Snow coated roofs and parked cars; icicles dangled from porches. Some made sleds out of whatever they could find - trash bin lids, baking sheets, cardboard boxes.
They've Never Seen Snow Like This Before. They Wanted to Make the Most of It.

Jan 21, 2025 | nytimes.com | Katy Reckdahl |Alex Stuckey |Marie Oliver |Rick Rojas

In the Ninth Ward of New Orleans on Tuesday, levees built to hold the Mississippi River at bay suddenly provided the perfect slope for sledding. And in a place unaccustomed to such activity, pieces of cardboard, storage container covers and a hard plastic lid cut from a rolling trash bin became vehicles for sliding through the snow. Owen Reilly, 9, was using a metal cookie sheet. "It seemed like it was scientifically impossible for it to snow here," Owen said, brushing white flakes from his hands.
New Orleans Gets Its First Snow in 15 Years

Jan 21, 2025 | nytimes.com | Katy Reckdahl |Rick Rojas

Weather upending routines and causing havoc is nothing new for New Orleans, which has contended with hurricanes, heat waves and the occasional ice storm. But snow? Not so much. The city went 15 years without measurable snow until Tuesday morning. "I would call it a poet's snow," waxed Kevin Bennett, a writer who pulled a folding chair outside in the French Quarter to smoke a cigarette in the blur of whirling white flakes. "I love it."For the vulnerable, though, the bitter cold was a real danger.