Times-Picayune’s Hurricane Isaac Coverage Hints at Paper’s Future

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Monday, September 03, 2012

Times-Picayune’s Hurricane Isaac Coverage Hints at Paper’s Future

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

As the staff at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans applied their well-developed hurricane-reporting skills last week, it was not just flooded roads and power failures that they contended with. Hurricane Isaac struck the region a month before the paper is to cut back print publication to just three days a week, lose part of its newsroom staff and merge into a new company with the Web site Nola.com.

While the newspaper may be in the middle of its transition, the storm gave readers a glimpse of what coverage may look like in the coming months. While The Times-Picayune still printed papers at plants in nearby Mobile, Ala., and Houma, La., the Web site became the destination for residents seeking updates about power failures, closed roads and where to buy ice. There were videos of a photographer driving through the storm, and aerial photographs that allowed evacuated residents to see the flooding in their neighborhoods.

Randy Siegel, the president for local digital strategy at Advance Publications, which owns the paper and Web site, said Nola.com had two to three times its usual traffic during the storm’s four-day sweep.

Hurricane Isaac arrived while the newsroom was still relatively well-staffed. And since the storm was less severe than Hurricane Katrina in 2005, The Times-Picayune could put roughly the same number of journalists to work during Isaac as it did back then.

Three-quarters of the 200 people who are being laid off throughout the paper were still covering Hurricane Isaac because they agreed to work through the end of September, according to Mr. Siegel. The paper also has hired more than half of the people who are joining the new news operation.

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.