By JERRY KANE
Salt Lake Tribune

While most newspapers are grasping on to the Internet, the New Orleans Times-Picayune hung on to it for dear life.

The newspaper's coverage of Hurricane Katrina last year earned it two Pulitzer Prizes, brought a new perspective to some employees and set an example of how news can be reported without a printed product.

"All of us learned, in various degrees, how to use the Internet with breaking news," said Fred Faour, sports editor of the Houston Chronicle. Faour was the moderator of a panel discussing ways Gulf Coast papers handled the storm.

Katrina directly changed the lives of staff members of Gulf Coast papers. In the face of dangerous flood waters, lack of power and water, poor communication, the threat of violence, lack of production facilities, and evacuation, they covered the storm, served the public and learned something about themselves.

The Times-Picayune evacuated its staff to Baton Rouge, where it reported the story online for the first three days. While the paper's press in New Orleans wasn't flooded, the building was surrounded by water. The paper posted PDF versions of each edition online, then later printed on the presses at Mobile, Ala., until returning to its New Orleans plant on Oct. 10.

Times-Picayune sports editor Doug Tatum said the paper published one sports story – about the Saints – the first day after the storm. He said sports alternated front pages with the features section until Oct. 11 and the deadline each day was 6 p.m. During the evacuation, a group of reporters, photographers and editors volunteered to stay in the city to report.

Times-Picayune reporter Jeff Duncan, a Saints beat writer until the storm, said a fellow reporter and photographer witnessed an incident in which police shot and killed a looter. He said the officer was on edge and hostile toward the reporters. While in the city, staff members stayed at each other's homes, sleeping on floors and taking baths in backyard swimming pools.

"I knew that kind of reporting wasn't going to be for everybody," Duncan said. "I didn't know what I was going to do. Neither did some of the other reporters that went back in. I did know our guys needed help and it was the biggest story of our lives."

A major obstacle was the lack of communication, Tatum said. He said it was difficult to get accurate information and confirm stories, partly because police officers were unable to communicate with each other. "I think the failings of the media after the storm were a little understandable," Tatum said.

Faour said he was driving to a football game at Houston's Reliant Stadium at the time evacuees from the Superdome where being relocated to Houston's Astrodome. He said the sight of thousands of people and an endless line of buses at the Astrodome moved him. "Needless to say, I didn't go to the football game. I was a little affected by that and went home."

Tatum said everyone on his staff was impacted in some way by the storm. Nine members of his staff had flooded or destroyed homes. Employees who evacuated had to find schools for their children – often in other states.

Duncan was scheduled to return to sports on July 17 and take a position as a special projects reporter.

"This isn't going away," he said. "We have a running joke at the paper. When's the first Picayune going to be published without the word Katrina in it. It's going to be at least five or 10 years before we don't have a Katrina story in the paper."

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