Prior to Katrina’s landfall, I posted something on the blog pondering how the New Orleans Times-Picayune would weather the catastrophe. As a journalism grad and someone who still has a lot of respect for the institution of the daily newspaper, I naturally had to wonder. Well, here are two posts on the T-P’s breaking news blog that offer some insight into just what they are doing:

For Times-Picayune employees
Times-Picayune staffers: We are working at the Houma Courier for a few days. If you have news, call 985-850-1182. We plan to set up a longer term newsroom in Baton Rouge. Call the Advocate to find out where we are. …

To readers of The Times-Picayune
The Times-Picayune was forced to evacuate our Howard Avenue newsroom Tuesday. We are setting up bureaus in Houma and in Baton Rouge to continue to provide coverage of this disaster. We will continue to publish the newspaper each day without interruption. We will make it available in PDF form on nola.com each morning around midnight. Reporters and photographers are filing a continuous stream of reports on nola.com.

I can easily imagine how important it is to those editors and reporters to carry on, even — nay, especially — with their city in ruins. Back when I was an editor at the Daily Trojan, I know I would been more than willing, if some sort of disaster struck USC, to go through hell or high water (er, no pun intended) to make sure that we got a paper out the next day. When L.A. Times editor (and one of my journalism profs) Aaron Curtiss told us about the enormous sense of pride he felt in getting a newspaper on people’s doorsteps the day after the Northridge earthquake (despite the fact that the Times’s main printing press was busted in the quake), I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I imagine it must be somewhat galling for some of the Times-Picayune staffers to find themselves unable to produce a physical paper — but then, where would they deliver it? At least they can publish a full-on, PDF-formatted newspaper on the Internet, and that’s a helluva lot better than nothing.

Speaking of which, you know they’ll win Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage, so long as it’s remotely decent. The major daily newspaper of a disaster-stricken city always has the inside track.