The Days After

Jason Brown, 28, began his career as an intern at The Daily Advertiser in 2004 and was promoted to a full-time night cops position shortly afterward.

Since then, Brown has worked as a general assignment reporter focusing on public safety and environmental issues.

He is a 2005 graduate of the University of Louisiana, where he received a journalism degree. While in college, Jason was the recipient of several Society of Professional Journalists collegiate journalism awards.

Last fall, Brown was part of a team of reporters deployed to various areas throughout Louisiana affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

A Louisiana native, Brown, 28, is father to a 7-year-old daughter, Paxton.

A professional journalist since 1990, Arnessa M. Garrett, 35, began her career as an intern at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. She attended Tulane University and was named a Truman Scholar in 1990. She spent her junior year of college at the Institut d’etudes politiques in Paris.

After graduating from Tulane with a bachelor’s degree in history, she worked at the Picayune as a copy editor before moving to Washington, D.C., to take a position at the Small Business Administration.

In 1993, she moved to Boston where she was hired on the copy desk of The Boston Globe. She worked at the Globe for seven years, editing national, foreign and local stories.

After leaving the Globe, she pursued a freelance writing and editing career in New York, taking courses at The New School in 2001.

A Lafayette native, she returned home to Louisiana and was hired by The Daily Advertiser as assistant metro editor in 2002.

Claudia B. Laws joined the staff of The Daily Advertiser in 2004. A 2002 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Laws interned at The Bay City Times, The Cedar Rapids Gazette and The Montgomery Advertiser before finding a home with the Lafayette paper.

While at The Advertiser, Laws, 26, has produced a variety of photo essays, including stories on roadside memorials to accident victims and a camp for children with heart defects. She was the lead photographer on a special section examining the arsenic levels of water in Cow Island, LA.

Her work has been published in local and national publications including USA Today.

Her photographs are also featured in Katrina: Devastation. Survival. Restoration, a retrospective look at the deadliest storm to hit the United States in decades.

Brittain Quibodeaux Orgeron, 25, graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2002, where she received a degree in mass communications.

After working as a technical writer and consultant, she took a position at The Daily Advertiser as a part-time reporter, then moved to a full-time copy desk post in 2003, where she now designs and edits.

Marsha Sills is a staff reporter at The Daily Advertiser. Sills started her career at the newspaper in late 2001 as a night cops reporter and covered the unfolding investigation of the 2002 murder of a local woman whose death was linked to serial killer Derrick Todd Lee.

For the past two years, Sills has covered higher education. Most recently, health-care issues have been added to her beat coverage. During Hurricane Rita, Sills reported from Lake Charles, La., which was hit hard by the storm.

Sills has worked on other special projects for the newspaper including coverage of the 2004 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and a local team’s trek to the 2005 Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA.

She graduated from the University of Louisiana in 2000 with a journalism degree.

Sills, 27, is a native of Libuse, a small community in central Louisiana.