By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:27 AM

When I was a video store clerk in college, nothing fired me up more than the prospect of a snow day. Foul weather promised a fair amount of extra sleep. Now that I'm a reporter, an ominous forecast presents new opportunities for thinking creatively: how to get to work, how to contact sources, how to file.

Many operations shut down when the weather turns rough, giving employees a welcome day off. That's not how it works in the news business. The weather is the news, so it often forces reporters to go to uncomfortable places to write, and write well. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, local journalists are battling not just hostile conditions, but the loss of their newsrooms and in some cases their presses.

Well, thank goodness for the Internet.

Now that most of New Orleans is under water and communications systems across the Gulf Coast sustained a fatal blow, local newspapers are using their Web sites to get the news out. In a profession that survives on its credibility and consistency, this is proving vital in the wake of the hurricane.

Take the Times-Picayune . The premier paper for New Orleans, its news staff had to jump ship when conditions in the city worsened to intolerable. The New York Times reported that the staff ended up in Houma in bayou country as well as Baton Rouge. Without a press, the paper's Tuesday and Wednesday editions were published online.

"Despite the scramble to find a new base of operations, The Times-Picayune was able to add a few staff-written stories to its Web site during the day as well as updates from The Associated Press. The Times-Picayune is part of the Newhouse chain of newspapers, owned by Advance Publications . The paper's Web site ... is run from computers in a data center in New Jersey, said [Jeff Jarvis], the former president of Advance.net, which oversees the Web sites of the Newhouse papers," the Times reported. "Steven Newhouse, the chairman of Advance.net, said he had mostly been watching The Times-Picayune's struggle to keep reporting the news from a distance since he lost e-mail and phone contact with the editors. 'So we've been out of touch, but they've had this amazing publishing thing on the Web and the Web log and they've done it under these terrible conditions,' Mr. Newhouse said."

The reporting so far has been formidable, especially with the site's compulsively readable lead story by Dan Shea, one of the paper's managing editors. The site also features missing person forums, a lost-and-found section, wire stories , weather reports and blog entries. In short, it's everything a well-run newspaper can do given free rein on the Internet.

Here's more from the Times: "The Internet, as a decentralized communications network, can be more resilient than traditional media when natural disasters occur. 'Owning broadcast towers and printing presses were useless,' said ... Jarvis, a consultant to online media companies. 'The Web proved to be a better media in a case like this.'"

I tried calling and e-mailing a couple other local news sources in the area to find out whether they published newspapers today, but couldn't get in touch with anyone. Nevertheless, they appear to confirm what Jarvis said.

The Sun Herald in hard-hit Biloxi, Miss., is running updated news as of just after 7 a.m. Eastern Time. I also saw online-only postings from the Courier out of Houma as well as the Daily Comet in Thibodaux, La. The Mississippi Press, serving the Pascagoula area, has a full PDF version of Tuesday's paper available at gulflive.com , but as of 9 a.m. ET there was no Wednesday edition.

All things considered, it's amazing that there is this much reporting and publishing activity going on at all. It's even more amazing when you consider that for all the talk about being excited by new opportunities on the Web, newspaper companies' relationships with the Internet are motivated mostly by fear and loathing. The Internet robs them of their revenue on just about every front, even as readers clamor for more and better news. ("Oh, and make it free while you're at it.")

Now that the traditional means of delivery -- newsprint -- is temporarily unavailable, these sites are using the tools at the Internet offers, and are doing it well under harsh conditions. Let's hope that this disaster proves profitable for newsrooms everywhere. If it does, it will benefit not just the readers but those of us who spend our lives serving them.

The scribes of the Gulf Coast are not the only journalists finding ways to surmount their obstacles. Locked out of their jobs because of an ongoing labor dispute, reporting staff at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. have turned to podcasts to provide their readers with the news. Of course, it's not the news of the world -- it's news about their work situation.

Here's the report from the Canadian Press : "[Union] members say the growing collection of recorded programs ... represent a small taste of what CBC listeners can expect if the lockout of the Crown corporation's 5,500 employees drags on. ... Offered to listeners via a Web site set up by members of the Canada Media Guild, the seven-minute digital file features interviews and stories about the lockout. 'Our listeners know us through the radio, so we had to communicate with them in an audio format,' said Jacques Poitras, a CBC reporter who wrote the script for the podcast and appeared as a guest representing the union. More podcasts quickly followed in cities across Canada. 'I guess that's what happens when you get 5,500 creative people with nothing to do,' said Poitras."

The Globe & Mail reported that this is just one outlet for a possible alternate news network: "On Tuesday at midday, around 150 CBC writers, producers and announcers from the broadcasters' TV, radio and web-based services, English and French, met in a room in Toronto's Metro Hall, across from the CBC's downtown headquarters, to plan an alternative national service to start as soon as Monday. According to Mark O'Neill, producer for CBC Radio One's Toronto drive-time show Here & Now, who is helping to co-ordinate the project, the alternative national news service will initially be an Internet news site, with written reports and photographs from individual CBC staff members from across the country."

Here's more from the paper: "And yet, while CBC managers have had to air BBC World news reports and self-produced, heavily diluted versions of the CBC's normal news service, the lockout has created an explosion of Internet blogs relaying news and opinions about the dispute. Many are personal, written from CBC workers' individual take on the issues and life on the picket line. Others are more newsy and service-oriented. Some are photo-based or have audio components (known as Podcasts) containing the alternate CBC radio show produced in Vancouver, for instance. One site by CBC broadcaster Tod Maffin in Vancouver ( http://cbcunplugged.blogware.com/blog ) has become so central that many in the union refer to it as the best source of news on CBC blogs and Podcasts."

Nothing goes hand in hand with reporting like a couple of stiff drinks, so here's a quick report from something I found in AdAge : Stolichnaya is using Web-connected jukeboxes in bars to reach its young target audience. According to the article, Allied Domecq Spirits & Wine Limited USA thinks that going after potential drinkers through an online jukebox is more effective than using Internet ads..

"It is a way to build the brand at point of sale, explained Ian Crystal, brand manager for Stolichnaya. 'About 50 percent of our business comes from on-premises -- so it's our strategic priority to be where it is sold,' he added. ... The vodka placement appears as a Flash-technology, tower-ad unit along the left-hand side of the screen, after the user selects the artist whose tune they want to hear. When the user clicks on the copy, after asking if the user is of legal drinking age, it reads: 'Help us choose the next Stoli vodka.' It gives the choice of possible flavors pomegranate, blueberry, caramel and passion fruit. After the user completes the survey, they see a thank-you screen that features a branding ad that says: 'Go enjoy a nice Stoli and tonic.'"

Don't worry, there's no need to twist my arm.

Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com.