After two years in which The Friends of The Times-Picayune Relief Fund raised more than $325,000 to help newspaper employees, the fund has officially closed as of January 7, 2008. We are grateful to the hundreds of corporate,individual and philanthropic donors who made our efforts possible to help the employees. To ask questions about the fund, please email one of the four trustees below. Thank you.
Two years after Hurricane Katrina, much of New Orleans still is in ruins. Recovery has been painfully slow for the whole city. And that includes employees of The Times-Picayune. So many of them lost their homes and belongings when the levees broke and flooded the city after the storm. Even as the newspaper has won two Pulitzer Prizes for its outstanding Katrina work, many on the staff are struggling to right their personal lives.
Some 190 employees – from the newsroom to the pressroom – registered with us for our relief fund. A few have withdrawn from the fund, but others recently asked to join citing mounting financial woes. Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the newspaper, has helped generously. But as one woman whose home took nine feet of water told us, "It takes a small fortune to start over." Indeed, we don't know anyone whose total losses are covered by insurance, FEMA or anyone else.
The Friends of The Times-Picayune Relief Fund has raised more than $300,000 so far, and we continue to raise more. We have mailed five rounds of checks to Picayune staffers ($371.64 on December 15, 2005, $452.48 on May 22, 2006, $392.10 on September 18, 2006 and $163.76 on March 29, 2007 and our final check of $514.61 December 20, 2007).
We put no restrictions on how money from the fund was spent. Recipients tell us they have used it to rebuild or tear down their homes or to buy building supplies, furniture, clothes, cars, food, Christmas toys and appliances. They use it to pay for such things as rent, medical bills, utility bills or homeowners insurance, often for homes that no longer exist.
We also established The Friends of John McCusker. That fund raised and distributed money to the Times-Picayune photographer on an emergency basis.
We are thankful to the many hundreds of journalists, journalism groups and people who believe in great journalism who contributed. Special thanks go to the the National Press Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, Time, Inc., Lipman Hearne and the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, as well as to Southwest Airlines, Environmental Defense, Citi, Goldman Sachs and the National Basketball Association.
Please use the links on the right to read about how the newspaper continued to publish, even after floodwaters engulfed its headquarters. They never stopped publishing on the web at nola.com and were quickly back in print, scattered in makeshift offices with borrowed presses. For many around the world, nola.com continues to be the primary source of information about the region’s struggling recovery.
On their behalf - many thanks,
Susan Feeney, Washington, 202-513-2000
Nan Varoga, Des Moines, 281-236-1973
Bridget O'Brian, New York, 646 209-7720
Wendi Schneider, Denver, 303-322-2246