Dawnsinger

     He that shall live this day, and see old age,     Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,     And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'     Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,     And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'     Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,     But he'll remember, with advantages,     What feats he did that day . . .       This story shall the good man teach his son;     And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,     From this day to the ending of the world,     But we in it shall be remembered-     We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;     For he to-day that sheds his blood with me     Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,     This day shall gentle his condition;     And gentlemen in England now-a-bed     Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,     And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks     That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. King Henry V, before the Battle of Agincourt - from William Shakespeare's Henry V  

On August 29, 2005, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans had ceased to exist as a print publication.  At least temporarily.  The newsroom was a dark furnace, with the air conditioner long gone, and the only light spilling from the generator-powered inner sanctum nicknamed the Hurricane Bunker. Katrina was still shrieking a demented Gregorian chant through cracks in the newspaper building.  Windows were broken and rain poured through the openings, sending waterfalls down internal walls and creating a suffocating sauna in the building.  Two things were clear - New Orleans had not, as reported by many, dodged the bullet.  In fact, we had first-hand reports that the city was being drowned by collapsed levees.  And the newspaper was not going to be printed.   I wish to God I'd had my video camera on hand as T-P editor Jim Amoss gathered the staff around him.  It was a weary group, the stress, physical suffering and fear for homes, family and the precious newspaper settling in.   We are covering the biggest story of our lives, Amoss told the group, and we may have lost the presses, but we're still going to publish a paper . . . online.   The staff circling him in that dark, suffocating place cheered and clapped.  While other local leaders were cracking and going hysterical, the Times-Picayune editor stepped up and showed what a leader is made of.  Wish I'd had a tape . . . it would have been required viewing for future journalists.  Our St. Crispen's Day speech. At that moment, NOLA.com moved from being the odd cousin of the Times-Picayune to being the center of activity.  The paper indeed published . . . wave after wave of blogged updates, and the nightly delivery of PDF "newspaper" pages.  And along with the news delivery was the constant flood of cries for rescue, posted by users on our forums and blogs, and used by rescue teams and separated families for rescues and reunion.  And more than a half-year later, the heartbreak continues in our devastated city. On Monday, the Times-Picayune was awarded two Pulitzers, for public service, and for breaking news, bringing its odd cousin, NOLA.com, along for the ride under new rules that allowed online entries.   The Biloxi Sun-Herald, which endured the same storm and brought uninterrupted coverage of the horrific destruction of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, shared the public service award. These awards - the peak of honor for any journalist - were received with cheers and tears . . . tempered with the knowledge that our city is still devastated,  many of our homes have been lost, many families are separated, and more than a thousand of our neighbors have died.  Jim Amoss made a second speech then, that spoke to the heart of a brokenhearted, but determined newsroom. I do have a recording of that speech.  (Listen to Amoss on Pulitzer day) Last month, I saw my daughter, Sarah, for the first time since a brief reunion after the storm.  During the height of Katrina, I worked through tears, knowing that she was in harm's way . . . evacuated from her Ninth Ward apartment, but huddled only two blocks from Lake Pontchartrain with trees crushing houses around her.  I had to go to Philadelphia.  She's among the tens of thousands who are scattered across the country.  Our emotional reunion ended where you might imagine . . . at a tattoo parlor, where we got father/daughter tattoos. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.