Perkins, the journalism professor, said the Times-Picayune had done a "fabulous job" responding to the disaster. "They are on their A game.... The original American papers were certainly crusaders for a cause. And they are too."
Employees at the Times-Picayune worry -- in an industry beset by declining circulation and a spate of recent job reductions -- how the paper's New York parent company can afford to keep the paper going with thousands of readers and advertisers in exile.
So far, however, Newhouse Newspapers has shown no sign of pulling back -- or out of -- New Orleans. "I have said that the Times-Picayune will continue to publish and that Advance will continue to own the Times-Picayune," said Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications, parent of a publishing empire that includes 25 Newhouse Newspapers. "I don't see that changing. Period."
Circulation of the Times-Picayune, once acclaimed for reaching a higher percentage of its city's readers than any other large U.S. paper, has crawled back to nearly 200,000 on weekdays, compared with a pre-Katrina circulation of 269,000.
Traffic on the paper's www.nola.com website -- which jumped as much as ninefold immediately after the storm -- remained about 50% above normal in October, with 783,000 distinct viewers for the month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
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The frenzy of the early reporting after Katrina hit -- camping out in makeshift newsrooms, begging and borrowing power for laptop computers, wading and kayaking to stories -- has given way to a long, difficult slog.
As many as half of the employees in some departments of the newspaper remain out of their homes. And time away from work does not mean time away from the disaster; it means long hours filled haggling with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials, insurance adjusters and contractors.
Without any intended exaggeration, veteran journalists say this is the last story they'll ever cover.
"If we were on adrenaline the first few weeks, we are operating just on faith right now ... faith that in some kind of way this is going to work out, that somehow we will come back," said John McCusker, a staff photographer who used to spend many Saturdays leading a "Cradle of Jazz" tour for overseas tourists.
