Oct. 26, 2006

Jim Amoss sees hope in New Orleans' recovery from Hurricane Katrina – hope for the people of the city, hope for his newspaper and hope for newspapers in their struggle to have meaning.

Amoss is the editor The New Orleans Times Picayune, and he helped open the 2007 conference of the Associated Press Managing Editors in his city Wednesday afternoon. Amoss was the conference's first keynote speaker. He used his time for a slide show on the hurricane and the city's struggle to recover and for a heartfelt message on how much the Times Picayune has meant to residents during the crisis.

After the slides showed the devastation, the impact on his news staff and the slow, agonizing work to rebuild, Amoss used the members of his library staff to show how – more than a year later – New Orleans is still a long way from normal.

One staffer spends time away from work searching for missing relatives. Another with four children under age 10 has moved from hotel to hotel and small apartment to small apartment after her home was destroyed. Still another who returned to his damaged home to begin repairing it burned his backyard fence for heat.

From the disaster, however, has come the unmistakable message of the Times Picayune's importance in people's lives. Amoss told of two reporters who were embraced by people recently displaced by the flood. He told of residents who quickly grabbed and read every paper distributed at the Convention Center in the days after Katrina.

The paper kept people connected to the news and their city in a way that nothing else could, he said. That bond reassured him and should reassure others of newspapers' vital role, Amoss said.