ROMULUS, Mich. - A little over a year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, The Times-Picayune, and the city it serves, is slowly regaining the semblance of normalcy it enjoyed before the storm devastated the Gulf Coast.

“We will endure,” said Ray Maly, vice president and production director at The Times-Picayune, speaking about the paper as well as the city during September’s International Newspaper Group meeting. “We were challenged and humbly learned what is important in life.”

Today, although New Orleans’ population is still below pre-Katrina levels, the paper, which won a pair of Pulitzer prizes for its coverage of the storm, is looking ahead.

Distribution up

Weekday distribution is now more than 200,000 copies, down from the more than 260,000 copies the paper distributed before Katrina, but up more than 10 percent from the 183,000 copies it printed in October 2005.

Left to right, Robbie Albrecht, head press operator; Randy O’Neill, night press manager; and Nick Hahn, night press supervisor, next to folder No. 6. All three played key roles printing The Times-Picayune in the weeks after Katrina.
Photo: Ray Maly

Among those 200,000 copies are 3,000 copies delivered to residents in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish, where almost every house was severely damaged by the storm. The fact that people are moving back, albeit in FEMA trailers, and still want their daily paper, “is a positive development for us,” Maly said. “That area was totally destroyed, and now they are back, and they want a home-delivered newspaper.

Other signs of progress are also evident.

The Times-Picayune is now printing many of its neighborhood-specific Picayune zones for Thursday and Sunday editions, including the one serving New Orleans Parish.

It’s also distributing a glossy fashion and lifestyle magazine, Wish, which made its debut last December. The monthly publication, printed on brighter newsprint and a heatset cover, sported 80 pages in October and will break the 100-page mark in November, reflecting a recovering economy.

Operationally, the paper beefed up its disaster recovery infrastructure, installing a new 10-ton air conditioner to protect its computer room and taking other steps to ensure that critical data is replicated and available remotely in the event of any future disruptions.

Ray Maly, vice president and production director,
holding a copy of the paper's Wish lifestyle publication.
Photo: Nick Hahn

“We’re still getting a feel for where the business is going,” Maly said, adding that the paper plans to evaluate early next year how it may upgrade its current press and postpress infrastructure. “There is nothing yet, but we are keeping our minds open and will revisit where we may go to upgrade equipment or change processes and procedures,” he said.

Staffing needs

On the staffing front, “We’re still looking for part-time employees, and we’re still juggling the production staff to meet our needs,” Maly said, adding that the paper takes pains to allow workers to leave early or change their hours as they wait for contractors and insurance adjustors. “We have to be understanding of all that.”

Top management, led by Publisher Ashton Phelps Jr. and other executives at Advance Publications Inc. and the Newhouse family, have spent the money necessary to get The Times-Picayune back on its feet, Maly said.

A Times-Picayune delivery truck navigates floodwaters Aug. 30 after
New Orleans' levees crumbled following Hurricane Katrina.
Photo: Ray Maly

“I can’t speak more highly of Advance and Newhouse,” he said. “They were there at the beginning and whatever needs we had they fulfilled them and made sure we could get the paper printed.”

Last fall, Maly wasn’t nearly as sanguine.

The city was just beginning to assess the damage left behind by Katrina, which killed almost 2,000 people and destroyed more than 150,000 houses in the Crescent City.

Severe damages

The Times-Picayune, although its downtown Howard Avenue plant survived relatively unscathed, faced thousands of dollars in repair bills. Its St. Bernard Parish bureau, for example, was inundated by more than 16 feet of water. In East Jefferson Parish, The Times-Picayune’s facility suffered rain and wind damage, requiring the paper to entirely gut the building. Other bureaus were also damaged, as were trucks and other property.

Employees, meantime, had to cope with flooded and destroyed houses, waterlogged automobiles and personal possessions and, perhaps most insidious of all, the stress associated with rebuilding shattered lives.

“Katrina is the pivot around which we will live the rest of our lives,” Maly said.

The Times-Picayune was forced to abandon its plant Aug. 30, after storm-weakened levees crumbled and floodwaters rushed through the city and adjoining St. Bernard Parish.

Although its plant was inaccessible, The Times-Picayune was able to continue publishing its newspaper in an electronic version on its affiliated Web site, NOLA.com.

Back to roots

Its first printed edition was distributed Sept. 2, when it produced 51,000 16-page papers using the presses of The Courier in Houma, La.

By Sept. 14, production shifted to the Mobile (Ala.) Register, which printed more than 84,000, 32-page copies, a press run that continued to grow as nascent recovery efforts took root. It wasn’t until Oct. 10 that all departments were able to again produce The Times-Picayune at the New Orleans plant.

During late summer and early fall, the affection New Orleans residents had for their hometown paper was reaffirmed every time a Times-Picayune delivery truck was spotted.

That rang especially true in the first weeks after Katrina, Maly said, recounting a day when Houma Courier Publisher Miles Forrest told him about an elderly Times-Picayune subscriber in Thibodaux, a town 12 miles north, who wanted to read The Times-Picayune.

“I got into a delivery truck and delivered the paper, and when I arrived, the lady said, ‘That’s my Times-Picayune,’” Maly said. “That’s how important the local paper is.”

Never assumed

Hand-delivering a paper to a subscriber in Thibodaux was not what Maly was thinking the night of Aug. 28, when he and 200 other Times-Picayune employees bunked down at the paper’s plant, confident the building would withstand Katrina’s fury.

“We had a disaster plan, and a safe room in the core of the building, and generators and enough fuel to last a week,” Maly said.

By 4 a.m. Aug. 29, power was out and some windows in the plant had blown out; rainwater was leaking into the cafeteria. But the building had survived, as had its production equipment.

Unfortunately, New Orleans’ canals and levees weren’t so lucky. When the 17th Street Canal breeched Aug. 30, water started flowing around The Times-Picayune’s building, forcing staffers to jump into delivery trucks and evacuate.

“Scores of people left, including a 6-week-old baby,” Maly said. “I had tears in my eyes; we left so fast we didn’t even lock up.”

The trucks navigated the flood-swollen streets for about a mile, until they reached higher ground at The Times-Picayune’s West Bank bureau. Reporters left and began their work covering the storm. Maly and a small production crew drove to Houma, where they reinvented the newspaper whose words and pictures first etched, and later eased, New Orleans’ agony.