There may be those who are offended by the Times-Picayune's crusading tone, but they would be hard to find in New Orleans or elsewhere along the Gulf Coast. Clancy DuBos, editor of the New Orleans alternative weekly Gambit, said the catastrophe demanded a new approach.
"I think the traditional journalistic, arm's-length ... cold view of what's going on would be taken almost as an abandonment at this point," DuBos said. "I think the readers want us to be up on the rooftops and to shout. The Picayune has done an excellent job. They have done a real public service."
And so, one piece by Rose rants at a driver who tosses a handful of trash into an already waste-filled city. A column by the paper's feature editor, James O'Byrne, wonders how a federal government with "blood on its hands" from its failed levees could question the wisdom of rebuilding in his once lovely Lakeview neighborhood. "Why do they hate us?" the outdoor editor asks in another column, so palpable has the fear of being forsaken become. And a star investigative reporter tries to head off television's "60 Minutes" from reporting that New Orleans could be doomed to sink beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss took the central message right to the federal government's doorstep last month, with an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. "We want word from Washington," said the New Orleans native, "that a great American city will not be left to die."
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Founded by a pair of journalists in 1837 with $700 in gambling winnings, the Picayune took its name from how much it cost to buy a copy: a 6 1/4 -cent Spanish coin. In subsequent years, it became the first big-city paper to be run by a woman, and has had such illustrious writers as O. Henry and William Faulkner on its staff.
Today, the bulk of the Times-Picayune's staff of about 270 reporters and editors has returned to the headquarters off Interstate 10 that was abandoned to advancing floodwaters on Aug. 30. Many of them are natives and many more converts who say they wouldn't live or work anywhere but New Orleans.
"It's not a war of choice. It's a war of survival," said Douglas McCollam, a native and freelance writer based in Washington who spent more than a week reporting about the Times-Picayune after the disaster. "They clearly see it as the city fighting for its life. And they are going to respond accordingly."
