NEW ORLEANS — After Hurricane Katrina, after the levees failed and water poured into this city known for its music, food and joie de vivre, it fell to the daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune, to be the reassuring voice in the darkness.
For the first three days after the flood began Aug. 30, 2005, the newspaper’s journalists — from those hunkered down in New Orleans to those camped out in nearby cities — updated residents via the newspaper’s website, NOLA.com, connecting families and friends who had fled the storm to those who had stayed behind.
The Times-Picayune resumed printing on Sept. 2, 2005.
A few days later, it ran an open letter to then-President George W. Bush.
Laced with sarcasm and desperation, the letter chastised the federal government, contending that it had failed in its response to New Orleans’ plight.
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.
No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.
In a city whose panicked residents felt abandoned and forgotten, The Times-Picayune had now served two purposes.
It spoke to them.
And it spoke for them.
For this reason, Katrina and its aftermath galvanized the relationship readers had with the newspaper.
Many credit The Times-Picayune and its dogged journalism for saving their city.
After the announcement by the newspaper’s New Jersey owners that The Times-Picayune would appear in print only three days a week, its readers sought to return the favor and save the newspaper.
‘SAVE THE PICAYUNE’
At Betsy’s Pancake House on Canal Street, the regulars greet one another with hearty backslaps and jocular hellos.
A waitress wielding a coffee pot serves up endearments each time she refills a cup — “On your left, sweetie” — as newly arrived patrons rush for their usual tables.
Once seated, many of the diners spread out that day’s edition of The Times-Picayune, exchanging sections and loud opinions throughout breakfast.
Take Phillip Dussett, for example, who works at the Midas auto shop next door to Betsy’s.
Each morning, Dussett leaves home a little early so he can read his T-P, as it’s known to the faithful, at the bustling restaurant before heading down the street to work.
But come October, Dussett and other readers will see their daily-newspaper rituals end.
That’s when The Times-Picayune will begin publishing only three days a week. On the remaining four days, readers will have to turn to NOLA.com for their news.
Dussett’s not happy about it.
“Everybody reads the paper in this city,” he says, his own copy tucked under his arm. “We don’t do that online thing.”
The early June announcement of the reduction in print prompted a swift and equally angry response from other New Orleanians — not only the newspaper’s readers, but also its advertisers.
Their rising voices were quickly joined by civic leaders, elected officials and business owners throughout the city.
They demanded a daily newspaper. And they scolded The Times-Picayune’s owners for laying off 200 of its employees, many of whom have worked at the newspaper for decades and had become not only household names, but trusted sources of vital information.
New Orleans restaurateur Ralph Brennan promptly put together a drinks menu for his five establishments, declaring that 20 percent of revenue would go to the journalists losing their jobs.
Dubbed “Save the Picayune,” the menu offered “News You Can Boo...ze” and encouraged patrons to “Take a Stand to Save the Times-Picayune.”
Cocktails include the Black, White & Read All Over, Stick to 7 (Days), Picayune Punch, Say It Ain’t So ... Please Don’t Go and the French 175 (Years) a reference to The Times-Picayune’s 175th anniversary on Jan. 25, 2012.
Brennan, a longtime New Orleans businessman and Times-Picayune advertiser, remains surprised and dismayed by the decision to move the newspaper mostly to a digital platform.
“A lot of us in a sense feel betrayed because The Times-Picayune is such a part of this community,” he says, elbows propped on a table at one of his restaurants, the Red Fish Grill on Bourbon Street.
“This is a fertile ground for hard news. The newspaper’s been such a keen element of that. I think they’re underestimating their value to the community.”
THE DECISION
The first anyone heard of the impending layoffs and reduction in printed editions came not from the Times-Picayune — which had yet to inform its staff or readers of any changes — but from a New York Times blog post by media writer David Carr on May 23.
That, readers say, was the first act of betrayal — that they had to hear the news from a northeastern paper instead of their own.
A few hours later, New Orleans’ weekly alternative newspaper, Gambit, added more local detail on its news blog.
The next day, The Times-Picayune confirmed the news in its own story, which mentioned in passing that the publication change would mean a “reduction in the size of the workforce.”
In that article, editor Jim Amoss promised readers that despite fewer printed editions, they could expect a “more robust” newspaper with “richer and deeper news.”
Over the next few weeks, readers learned that Newhouse Newspapers, which bought The Times-Picayune in 1962, had decided to shift to a digital format and publish a printed newspaper only three days a week — Wednesday, Friday and Sunday — thereby cutting print costs.
The company also is reducing print editions and cutting its staff in Alabama, at newspapers in Mobile, Birmingham and Huntsville.
But New Orleans — which this autumn will become the largest American city without a daily newspaper — produced the loudest protests.
Letters to the editor poured in:
A newspaper is the fabric of our community. Without it, we all just become loose threads.
A situation has come to mind about this three-day-a-week paper publishing: I guess I may be pretty cold by the time my obituary hits the paper.
How are two old people going to share a 15-inch computer monitor?
Another fact noted by angry readers: The lack of Internet access for many residents.
According to a 2010 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 36 percent of New Orleanians don’t have Internet access at home.
Curry O’Day, 26, works in technical support for Tulane University. Despite his fondness for gadgets, and the fact that he reads The New York Times online and The Atlanta Journal Constitution on his Kindle, O’Day wants a daily, printed version of The Times-Picayune.
“I work in technology. I’m no enemy of the digital platform,” O’Day says. “But [NOLA.com] doesn’t replace what the paper is. I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid.”
“The paper is an institution. And institutions in New Orleans somehow have a deeper connection with the community than in other places.”
Also troubling is that even as the city is seeing “a great upward trajectory” since Katrina, the newspaper — credited for helping rebuild New Orleans — is now assuming a diminished role, O’Day says.
“This seems counterintuitive to the growth of the city,” he adds.
Those prominent in New Orleans’ business community have talked of finding a buyer for The Times-Picayune if they can persuade Newhouse to sell.
But when asked by The New York Times if the Newhouse family would entertain such an idea, Steven Newhouse replied: “We have no intention of selling, no matter how much noise there is out there.”
That comment set off an even bigger maelstrom as indignant readers protested over being referred to as “noise.”
O’Day promptly sat down and wrote a letter to the editor:
Management needs to step back and let us have our moment, too. This is a sad time, so let us be sad. Don't tell us that our sadness is misplaced. I work at Tulane, and if I told you we were developing a “more robust” education by firing half of our faculty, you would laugh at me.
Stop trying to placate us by couching this awful transition in a false positive light. Your readers are smarter than you apparently think we are.
TAKING ACTION
In a gallery off of Magazine Street, jewelry designer Mignon Faget’s work glistens under artfully placed lights.
Charms, bracelets, necklaces ... each shimmering item reflects elements of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
It’s said that every true New Orleans lady owns at least one piece of Faget’s jewelry. Some of Faget’s work, however, is meant to memorialize or raise awareness.
A Gulf charm bracelet, for example, is worn in the tradition of mourning jewelry. Faget created it after the BP oil spill, with proceeds going to the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
A longtime subscriber to The Times-Picayune, Faget was devastated to hear that the newspaper would be printed only three days a week.
“What am I going to drink my tea with every morning?” she asked her employees.
In short order, Faget designed a pin that, initially, meant to protest Newhouse’s decision and make residents think about the importance of print journalism.
But when the company remained firm in its decision, Faget decided to use the pin to raise money for DashThirtyDash, a fund for the journalists losing their jobs.
“She’s just saddened by the whole thing,” says Faget’s marketing coordinator Coeli Hilferty, cradling the pin in her hands. “It kind of shattered her world a little bit to know it’s not going to be on her doorstep every morning.”
The pin is made from looped black ribbon topped with an actual piece of The Times-Picayune.
The two are attached by a shiny T-P in the newspaper’s font.
For weeks now, Faget’s employees have carried in their daily newspapers — which are then hand-cut — to be used in the pins’ creation, Hilferty says.
“We wanted to help. This is a statement pin, but it also goes to the journalists.”
Over on St. Charles Avenue, bar owner Polly Watts also is in the midst of fundraising plans.
She and two nearby establishments are hosting a pub crawl to raise money for DashThirtyDash.
Watts, whose father opened The Avenue Pub 26 years ago, gets two copies of The Times-Picayune delivered to the bar each day — one for her, one for patrons.
Like many, Watts initially hoped that Newhouse would reconsider. Now she’s focused on helping the soon-to-beout-of-work journalists who “talked” her through Katrina and the grim months that followed.
“What they did for the city and for me personally — in terms of keeping me informed and keeping me safe ...”
Watts falls silent for a moment and takes a drag from her cigarette.
“What are we going to do next time? Wait for Wolf Blitzer to come in? What those reporters did — it’s irreplaceable. Aside from reporting then, it goes beyond that. They’ve written years of stories about the recovery that were incredibly important to the community.”
Like many other readers, Watts isn’t impressed with NOLA.com. The site is difficult to navigate, she says. And the stories aren’t in-depth or even necessarily local.
And how, she asks, can Newhouse promise the same strong, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting and photography given the steep cuts being made?
“You can’t convince me or anyone else with half a brain cell that covering news is important to you if you slash half your staff.”
AN UNUSUAL BOND
Under the new arrangement, New Orleans news will be delivered by NOLA Media group, described on its website as a “digitally-focused news organization encompassing all content, marketing and sales operations for: nola.com and The Times Picayune.”
Not acceptable, says Anne Milling from her gracious sitting room in her St. Charles Avenue home.
The newspaper — as well as the devotion it inspires — goes back a long way in her family, Milling explains.
When her parents moved to Monroe, La., in 1950, Millings’ parents had the daily edition delivered to them via Greyhound.
“It was always a day late,” she recalls laughing. “But they still got it.”
Katrina and the flooding were what intensified New Orleanians’ loyalty, Milling says.
“It was the paper who encouraged the recovery and empowered the citizens. They chronicled our disaster so beautifully, but in the process they gave us hope. They had that same resilience that citizens have shown, and they were empathetic to what we were going through.
“After Katrina, everybody read the paper. They spoke for us.”
Milling describes The Times-Picayune as the city’s “backbone for civic dialogue.”
That’s because on any given day everyone has read the same front-page story, whereas those getting their news online may have read another media outlet’s version, rather than the local one, she says.
“You can’t say, ‘Did you see that story?’ and know that they did. The Times-Picayune carried the conversation that allowed us to rebuild. If it’s printed only three days, you can’t carry those conversations. They can’t be sustained.”
Kevin Allman, editor of the alternative weekly, Gambit, says there’s another reason for the strong bond between readers and their daily newspaper:
“It holds people accountable in a city that desperately needs accountability. ... It’s seen as a hard-news paper in a town that expects hard news.”
JAZZ FUNERAL
On the night of the pub crawl, Allman is among the crowd gathered at The Avenue Pub.
The bar’s regulars congregate on the first floor. But up the scuffed, red stairs, past bright murals, journalists from The Times-Picayune have gathered.
They are there to mourn, yes, but also to celebrate their newspaper — because that’s how New Orleans does things, says photographer John McCusker, who shot his first picture for The Times-Picayune at age 20.
He believes much of the city’s protestations over losing a daily newspaper stem from having lost so much already.
McCusker, whose home was destroyed in 2005, says that in a place where so much hinges on tradition and institutions, people didn’t just lose possessions in the flooding.
“We lost our church. We lost our school,” he explains. “Our life as we knew it is gone. So when you talk about loss, that is the level of loss we’re talking about. Maybe that’s why we’re so sensitive about losing anything.”
Another element is the trust that readers have in the printed word, McCusker says. Seeing something published in the newspaper makes things seem more real in a place that, for a time, defined unreal.
McCusker recalls the day people lined up to get newspapers after the Saints won the 2010 Super Bowl.
“They wanted to hold that moment in a tangible, tactile way in their hands,” he says.
McCusker believes The Times-Picayune will continue to do great journalism. But people — not just journalists, but readers too — need time to grieve.
After The Times-Picayune staff learned who would stay and who would go under the new publishing format, Mc-Cusker — who was among those who lost their jobs — threw a party for the newsroom.
And just like when he planned a funeral for his wife, who died from complications from a brain aneurysm more than two years ago, he made sure a brass band was part of the party.
At the beginning of the gathering, the musicians played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” before moving on to more upbeat songs.
“It’s better to have had this thing we’re losing than to have never had it at all,” Mc-Cusker says. “It’s time to say goodbye. But I didn’t want to say goodbye by myself.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/08/2012