New Orleans Times Picayune Newspaper

When dozens of journalists from the New Orleans Times-Picayune boarded a fleet of delivery trucks and abandoned their newsroom to rising floodwaters Tuesday morning, the newspaper's future seemed in doubt. But Louisiana's largest daily returned to print Friday morning, thanks to the pluck of its journalists and the willingness of a neighboring newspaper to share its printing presses, the Times-Picayune's top editor said.

Every few minutes, a new plea for help arrived. The sister of a doctor trapped in a hospital said patients were on the verge of dying. A frantic woman stranded in a Holiday Inn said authorities couldn't rescue her because looters prowled the area. And a baseball executive asked whether anyone could help find a 1950s Boston Red Sox ace who had gone missing during Hurricane Katrina. Hundreds in all, they are posted at www.nola.com a website affiliated with the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has located a veteran reporter who was last heard from the day before Hurricane Katrina struck the region on Aug. 29. Rising water had forced the newspaper to abandon its offices Aug. 30 but it returned to print a few days later at a new location with the help of a neighboring newspaper. The paper had its last contact with Leslie Williams as he was en route to the Mississippi coast to report on a hurricane shelter.

To New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, the front porch gatherings felt like an extension of his work -- another way to talk with his neighbors about everything that had happened since Hurricane Katrina. A collection of old and new friends arrived on the stoop of his Uptown home most nights following the storm. Their stories flowed, along with the cold bottles of Abita Amber, the local brew.

More than three years before Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, newspaper reporters Mark Schleifstein and John McQuaid wrote a series that predicted what would happen when the city took a direct hit from a major hurricane. "Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable," one of the stories in the New Orleans Times-Picayune said. "But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which had never before won a Pulitzer Prize, won two on Monday, including the most prestigious, the gold medal for public service, for a series of articles examining threats to the world's supply of fish. Walt Handelsman of the Times-Picayune won a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning. The Seattle Times also won two Pulitzers.