By WRIGHT THOMPSON
Kansas City Star

A photographer saw them, one of the T-P's team of fearless shooters. Ted Jackson stopped his truck and picked them up. They motored through the 3 feet of water, past streams of people looting stores, the storm still beating down on New Orleans. Duncan's SUV was parked in front of the building; it would soon be lost, too.

They ran back inside. Clearly, something was horribly wrong. New Orleans was filling up, and the water wouldn't stop rising.

I worked at the Times-Picayune as a summer intern and LSU football beat writer (for, as anyone there will be quick to point out, one season). Meeks was my boss.

Duncan was a great friend. I have many friends down there, and as I sat before my television a month ago, I knew what was happening.

I'd read the T-P story in 2002, the one the United States government somehow failed to read, the one that said: In the event of a major hurricane, New Orleans is dead. When the storms bore down that Monday, I understood how bad it was going to be.

I also knew where many of my friends were. It was T-P legend. A hurricane comes, and you come into the office. The big, white building at 3800 Howard was storm proof. Bring food. Bring water. Bring pets. You'll survive here and, oh, yeah, put out the paper.

So, while Meeks and Dunk watched the water rise in person, I was watching it rise on TV. I saw the levees break. From the overhead shots, it was clear that Meeks' home in Lakeview was gone. So were other staffers': general assignment and longtime NFL reporter Brian Allee-Walsh and Hornets beat writer Jimmy Smith, for sure, and certainly others.

Meeks knew it, too, taking a kayak home, sobbing when he saw his life filled with water, up to the gutters. He paddled in to save his mother's dog and then, knowing what he had to do, paddled back to the Times-Picayune. The big building would hold and they'd put out a paper, right? Normally, yes. But there was nothing normal about Katrina, and the water kept on rising.

On Tuesday morning, publisher Ashton Phelps said everyone had 15 minutes to pack one bag. The Picayune was abandoning Howard Avenue. New Orleans was flooding. They smashed everyone into the back of delivery trucks, beginning a nearly eight-hour odyssey.

They first went to Houma, about 60 miles away. There, assistant sports editor Kevin Spain helped get a bureau of sorts running, before settling in Baton Rouge later. The first night was one of his greatest in the business, as he and others blogged until 3 a.m., determined to still send news out into the void. People were grateful; nola.com would get 200 million page views in the two weeks after the storm.

"It was unbelievable," Spain says. "It was the most satisfying thing I've ever done."

Later that first day, when they got the phone calls routed from the big building to the makeshift office, he was stunned. In middle of all of this, people still cared about sports. One lady was frantic that her LSU season tickets had been washed away.

"I took like five or six calls," Spain says. "All but one of the people asked, 'What does this mean for the Saints?' "

As the staff scattered, some in Houma, others in Baton Rouge, some evacuated to Houston, others to Memphis and beyond, the newspaper climbed off the canvas. In Baton Rouge, Tulane beat writer Ben Hochman and LSU beat writer William Kalec went to pick up colleagues turned refugees and took them back to Kalec's house. They were humbled by what they saw.

"Guys who normally talked about nickel packages and quarterback recruits were talking about the torture of a hurricane and the fright of uncertainty," Hochman says. "These weren't sportswriters. These were survivors."

They were also journalists sitting on the biggest story of their lives, and they'd be damned if they left their city to others. No one who has ever worked there had any doubt. We used to joke that the T-P was like the city of New Orleans itself. Day to day, it could be pretty average. But come a big event, no one rose to the occasion better.

My favorite memory of my time there was the post-Super Bowl party at the Balcony Bar on Magazine Street. We'd just finished an amazing week of sports coverage and, with Meeks' credit card on the bar, the entire staff celebrated. I imagined what the party would be like after the same people had thrown everything they had at Katrina.

That first day, Meeks and others knew what they had to do. Picayune reporter Brian Thevenot describes the scene in the latest issue of American Journalism Review:

Sports Editor David Meeks, formerly the suburban editor and the man who hired me in 1998, harnessed the unrest. He made the pitch to Editor Jim Amoss: Give me a delivery truck and a small group of writers. We'll go back.

"How are you going to eat?" Amoss asked him. "How are you going to file?"

"Jim, we'll find a way," he said. "We'll find good New Orleanians who will help us out. I'm a resourceful guy."

"I know you are," Amoss said. "Do it. Who do you need?"

Meeks put together an A-Team. It would grow to include a motley mix, everyone from a lifestyle columnist to the music critic to the food critic to the religion writer to my friends Duncan and Thevenot. They would go back into the post-apocalyptic city, with the sports editor suddenly running the New Orleans bureau of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"He was a hero in this whole thing," Duncan says. "He's shown that he's not only fearless, but he also knows how to get it done."

From the first few days of web only, to using another paper's presses for a limited run 72 hours later, the Times-Picayune covered the story. For the sports department, that meant tracking LSU and Tulane and the Saints. Mike Triplett, who replaced me on the Tigers, replaced Duncan on the Saints. Hochman settled temporarily into a hotel in Dallas, listening to the players he covered tell stories of losing everything.

"There is always that line," he says. "You know what line I'm talking about. No matter how cordial I am, no matter how much we get along — he's the coach, I'm the writer. He's the quarterback. I'm the writer. Well, here at the Dallas DoubleTree, that line is now blurred. Here, we're all just humans, and we're all New Orleanians, dealing with unfathomable circumstances. I just happened to be the one with the pen."

With Meeks in New Orleans, deputy sports editor Doug Tatum took over. The staff didn't miss a beat.

"One thing I knew while we were in this reporting firefight in New Orleans was that our sports section was in great hands with Doug Tatum running it," Meeks says. "Doug is a terrific journalist, and it's my hope he is the next sports editor at The Times-Picayune."

The crew somehow managed to cover their beats. If you've never been to Southern Louisiana, it's hard to grasp how important football is to so many people. Each morning, the Times-Picayune told them about their teams, gave them a sign that the world would eventually right itself.

The staffers saw it when they handed out the paper. Yes, the same people who reported the news were also handing out bundles of it. For the sportswriters and editors and photographers and designers, the knowledge that they were serving a battered community kept them going. Struggling with guilt and trying to figure out why sports mattered, Hochman sat down at his laptop soon after arriving in Dallas and began tapping out an e-mail.

"Last night I called my good friend, Jeff Duncan," Hochman wrote to me. "I just assumed he was in San Antonio with the team. He wasn't. He was imbedded in New Orleans, reporting and telling stories. He has seen dead bodies. Troops patrolling the park where he jogs. People whose homes are memories. My stomach churned while talking with him. Who cares about freaking football? Why aren't I in New Orleans, too? Then I thought about the quarterback's tears. Every person from New Orleans is a story."

As the weeks go by, the rush has worn off. This isn't some temporary assignment. They are war correspondents who can't go home. Hochman just rented an apartment in Ruston, La., near where Tulane has set up shop. The paper is headquartered in an old mall in Baton Rouge, after using the LSU journalism school for a time. They're hoping to get back to their building soon, waiting for another sign that the city they once knew will someday become that city again.

There haven't been many bright spots in New Orleans. Perhaps the brightest has been the reaction of its newspaper. The town has a love affair with the Picayune. Year after year, it has the highest penetration rate in the country. People in New Orleans depend on that building on Howard, and on the journalists inside.

In New Orleans, Meeks is still running the show. Section divides have fallen away as everyone becomes simply a journalist. Mike Montalbano, who I knew as one of the slot guys, has been working inside the city. I am not surprised. He ran grueling distance races when he wasn't cleaning up our copy.

Josh Peter, regarded by some as the best investigative sports reporter in the country, is working on a big story in Houston. I can't wait to read it. At the New Orleans bureau, which has moved from a colleague's house to a hotel, all the rules have changed.

When the water was up, they took a kayak on supply runs. For a while, they were armed with a shotgun and two .357s. Now that the water's gone down, things are still far from normal. Duncan doesn't know when or if he'll go back to the Saints. He's working on a project.

"Obviously," he says, "it's more important that the Saints. The Saints seems pretty insignificant right now. I think that's why I'm down here."

They struggle every day, with stories, with simple things like filing and reporting. They struggle to work in a place they love, wondering what the future will hold. Sometimes, it seems hopeless. But other times, New Orleans' humanity fights through the misery. Not long ago, while they were still running on a generator, the proud paper reduced to an Uptown house, an amazing thing happened.

Chris Rose, a beloved local columnist, took a bundle of papers down to the French Quarter. For once, he came home with something. He's got friends all over the city, and one of them wanted to help out. Rose was granted access to New Orleans holy ground: the freezer at Antoine's, one of the city's fine old line restaurants. The good Samaritan, a pal of the owner, told him to take about 600 of the finest filets mignon to feed troops who'd come to rescue their city. And while you're at it, take two dozen for yourselves. The man wanted to give something back to the journalists working literally against all odds to serve their hometown.

Rose took the steaks back to the house. The remnants of one of America's great newspapers fired up a grill. They slugged down the booze, proud to be with their brothers in arms. One of the staffers cranked a car and turned up the stereo. They finally took a breath. A tear or two fell when Randy Newman sang what's become the town's theme song:

"What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Oh, Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away."