As he drove through his new hometown, Kovacs (he’s shopping for a Baton Rouge house to buy; none are for rent and he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to move back to New Orleans) pondered aloud about when and how the paper, and the city, will come back to full flower. “I don’t know if the city’s biggest entities can come back until all of the small ones do,” he said, noting that no one has any idea about when the paper may once again move back into its waterlogged Howard street offices. The problem — and it’s only one of a legion of problems — is that with the city’s residents scattered all over the country, even if some businesses begin to reopen, who will be there to staff them, or to patronize them? And when some big businesses come back, will there be a support structure of delivery services, employees and all the other necessities of running a business? In short, can a city be reborn in pieces, or does the whole thing have to reassemble before it comes alive?


In paging through Wednesday’s 16-page edition — a stack of which sits in the foyer of the LSU journalism building next to a box of junk food and donated t-shirts, which students regard quizzically on their way by — one notices that even now the Times-Picayune contains ads. Entergy, Chase, ExxonMobil, State Farm, BP and WalMart all have paid ad space in the paper (“it’s the only revenue we’ve got,” Kovacs explains). And while the ads were little more than statements of support for those affected by Katrina, they do show that companies haven’t turned tail on the city, or on the Times-Picayune. And so, the paper devoid of a city continues to publish.


See also:


Part II: Embedded with the Times-Picayune in New Orleans


Part III: In New Orleans, Everyone’s a Critic