Nola.com, the website of the beleaguered
New Orleans Times-Picayune,
has put out a call for "skilled producers who want to work for us on a
temporary basis." According to Advance Internet president
Peter Weinberger
(Advance operates Nola.com), the site initially is seeking some
freelance help in the weeks and possibly months ahead to enable it to
better cover the massive hurricane-aftermath and cleanup story.
The newspaper operation, including its website staff of 15 people, has been moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, since the
T-P
building is uninhabitable. Weinberger says that the company is not at
this point thinking of having temporary producers be in Baton Rouge,
but rather work from wherever they live.
Understandably, the Nola.com and Advance Internet managers have not yet
scoped out a complete plan of attack, so Weinberger was unable to speak
of long-term coverage plans for the website. (Nola.com editor
Jon Donley was unreachable.) Nor would Weinberger predict how long the site might want temporary help.
Nola.com has, predictably, seen huge usage numbers this week.
Yesterday's page-view count was around 30 million; in comparison, the
entire page-view count for the month of July was 26 million. Weinberger
says the traffic numbers seem to grow each day as the New Orleans
crisis deepens.
With the demand for information from the public to the website of New
Orleans' dominant newspaper sure to be huge, the staff will have a huge
task ahead in the coming weeks -- indeed, throughout the rebuilding
process.
Online news professionals interested in helping out Nola.com are being asked to send e-mail to
jterrito@advance.net.
