Keynote speaker

James O’Byrne

Features editor

The Times Picayune

On Monday afternoon, Aug. 29, a few hours after the winds of Katrina fell below hurricane strength, James O’Byrne, The Times-Picayune’s former Sunday editor on the copy desk and current Features editor, left the newspaper and headed out on his bicycle intent on checking out his home in Lakeview. Thus began a seven-hour reportorial journey into the heart of a catastrophe.

O’Byrne and his traveling companion, art critic Doug MacCash, were the first reporters to discover the devastating effects of a city going under water, beginning with O’Byrne’s Lakeview neighborhood, home of the levee breach that would ultimately flood 80 percent of the city.

Twelve hours later, O’Byrne and 240 co-workers and employee family members

who had taken refuge at the paper during the storm hastily fled The Times-Picayune’s building in delivery trucks as the water they had discovered

pouring in the previous afternoon arrived at the newspaper’s doorstep.

O’Byrne’s job during the next week was straightforward: Build a makeshift copy desk, design desk and photo desk from scratch in a Baton Rouge business park, using nothing but the incredible endurance and ingenuity of his news colleagues, his 25 years at the newspaper – and the American Express card

numbers of the head of IT and the newspaper’s general manager.

Although O’Byrne lost his house and everything in it, he gained a profound understanding of the importance of daily newspapers in the lives of their readers.