Meet Susan Catron and talk to her about what she does to prepare her newsroom and staff to cover a major hurricane or a community disaster. Ask her about how she sustained her newsroom while the Savannah community faced incredible sorrow and outrage because of the 2010 Imperial Sugar explosion, where 14 people were killed.
Susan Catron has been executive editor for the Savannah Morning News since 2005. She is also responsible for web and print content for savannahnow.com and the Bluffton Today, Effingham Now, Bryan County Now, and the Jasper County Sun Times.
Catron’s newspaper has covered many hurricanes and disasters that have hit the Savannah area over the years including the 2010 Imperial Sugar explosion and was covered by investigative journalist Larry Peterson, who wrote comprehensive reports and also published a book about the explosion, Deadly Dust. (SPJ Region 3 Larry Peterson Memorial Award for Investigative Journalism).
Her newspaper career started in Springfield, Missouri, with the Springfield News-Leader, where she was a copy editor and feature editor, and later she moved up the newsroom ranks as a feature editor at the Pensacola News Journal and assistant features editor at the Lexington Herald-Leader. Returning to the South in 1998, Catron became the managing editor at the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia before coming to Savannah Daily News. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Trauma & Stress: while working in journalism 