Newspapers Improvise With Web Editions and Blogs

One consolation for reporters and editors is that it's not clear how many people would have a chance to read the 260,000-circulation paper.

"Things are so bad in the city that there are no ways to get copies of the paper to anyone anyway," said Mark Schleifstein, the environmental reporter and hurricane expert drafted into duty as the paper's spokesman in the crisis. "The water is continuing to rise and people are pouring out of the city."

The 168-year-old newspaper continued to publish stories and photos on its website nola.comwhile its publisher and managers scrambled to find an alternative site to print its daily edition.

The crisis at the Times-Picayune exemplified the challenges facing the media throughout the region being lashed and flooded by Hurricane Katrina. The newspaper was among several news outlets that moved into temporary workspace outside the flood zone and struggled to communicate with reporters, who were bedeviled by spotty phone service.

The Times-Picayune's challenges came to a head Tuesday morning. Many reporters and editors were already ragged from spending two nights in the newsroom. The air conditioning had gone out and a generator providing the only electricity was running low on gasoline.

As the floodwaters continued to rise after 11 a.m., Publisher Ashton Phelps Jr. gathered workers in the newspaper's cafeteria and told them it was time to abandon the offices and regroup at a safer location.

By Tuesday afternoon, six delivery trucks that normally carry bundles of newspapers instead delivered Times-Picayune journalists to makeshift space at two other newspapers -- the Houma Courier and the Baton Rouge Advocate. From those remote locations, the paper continued to publish bulletins on its website.

It's a measure of how bad things had become in New Orleans that the journalists were relieved just to be working again, even in the Houma paper's cramped conference room. "We have phone lines and a wireless Internet connection and the whole bit. We are blessed to say the least," Schleifstein said.

Other news operations also moved to safer ground and -- with some reporters scattered and trying to attend to their own family crises -- a few outlets relied on civilian Internet reporting to provide information on trouble spots, evacuation centers and other details.