'Times-Pic' Sports Coverage: On the Road Again

By: Joe Strupp Last month, after five years at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Doug Tatum got his dream job: sports editor. Unfortunately, because of Hurricane Katrina, the local sports teams have moved out of town, with some even departing the state.

But that hasn't stopped Tatum and his staff from covering the NBA's Hornets, NFL's Saints, and Tulane University athletics, along with some 80 local high schools as closely as possible. Although, at times, Tatum may feel like he's editing the travel section instead of the sports pages.

"It's a challenge," Tatum, 35, told E&P. "It is the job I've always wanted, but I didn't see it being like this." Tatum, who spent five years as deputy sports editor before taking the top spot on Oct. 24, has had to relocate a handful of major beat writers to temporary homes across three states to handle the coverage.

"All of the guys have been fabulous," Tatum said. "They are covering the teams and doing their jobs."

The biggest change has been in coverage of the Saints, who relocated to San Antonio, Tex., and the Hornets, now playing out of Oklahoma City. As for Tulane, the Times-Picayune has to cover the university's five major sports at five locations in two states.

While Tulane football is now based at Louisiana Tech., in Ruston, La., the women's basketball team is at Texas Tech in Lubbock. The men's basketball team now plays its home games at Texas A&M in College Station, Tex. Tulane golf and tennis, which also receive major Times-Picayune play, are at other Texas sites.

"It also goes down to the high school level where we have high schools evacuated and players enrolled at other schools," Tatum said. "But 75% of the teams are playing some kind of schedule. There are teams playing just two or three games to give the kids a chance to play."

A lack of local stringers and freelancers has forced the paper to cover only key match-ups each week at the high school level, with most game coverage often relying on coaches just calling in scores, Tatum said.

Times-Picayune writers on the pro beat have simply moved to their team's new home towns, usually hundreds of miles away. For some, that move has come as they are still trying to rebuild homes that were damaged or destroyed in Katrina's wake.

Saints beat writers Mike Triplett and Brian Allee-Walsh are sharing an apartment in San Antonio, with Triplett covering the away games alone. Allee-Walsh often has to monitor the Saints out-of-town games on the radio from their joint home since they are not shown locally in the south Texas city. "This is [Dallas] Cowboy country," he says.

For Allee-Walsh, 53, the relocation has meant both a work disruption and a temporary split from his family. His wife, Jennie, is a New Orleans social worker still living and working in the Big Easy in a rented house, while his daughters, 17 and 21, have relocated to a high school and college in Houston, living on their own.

The three-way split was necessary after the hurricane all but destroyed their house in New Orleans' washed out Lakeview area. "That is the worst part of all of this," Allee-Walsh said. "Our goal is to be under the same roof by Christmas."

Triplett, who started on the Saints beat this season after three years covering LSU football, lost the apartment he and his wife had occupied to hurricane damage. But, the couple had just bought a townhouse in nearby Metairie, La., which miraculously received no damage. Still, his relocation to Texas has been hard on him and his wife, a fourth grade teacher.

"This is a real grind," Triplett, 29, said. "Part of it is that we don't know where the team is going to be in January. They might be moving."

Both Saints writers pointed to the side story of the team possibly relocating to San Antonio or some other city permanently. With the Louisiana Superdome in disrepair from the hurricane, Saints owner Tom Benson has threatened to move them away for good. That story has prompted a different spin in the local San Antonio Express-News, Allee-Walsh noticed. He said his paper and the local daily are covering it from very different perspectives.

"They cover the team like a honeymoon, without the warts we know," Allee-Walsh said. "They see the owner as a guy who can bring commerce in to the city and we see him as an owner being so cruel as to take away our football team."

There is also the added burden of traveling to Baton Rouge, La., where half of the Saints home games are being played this season. "You are out of your comfort zone, you want some stability," Triplett added. "But the story is really grueling."

Triplett and Allee-Walsh are not the only ones who've moved out of town to follow their beats. Jimmy Smith and John Reid, who cover the Hornets, are sharing an apartment in Oklahoma City, while Tulane football writers Fred Robinson and Ben Hochman have bunked together at a rental in Ruston, La., near Louisiana Tech.

"It's not home," said Smith, 49, who has spent 32 years in the paper's sports section. "But I don't have a home to go back to." Smith's New Orleans house, where he has lived for 25 years, was ruined after 10 feet of water flooded the premises. The destruction forced his wife and two children to relocate to Baton Rouge, where he sees them during sporadic visits.

Smith and Reid have been alternating months at the Oklahoma City apartment, with one of them covering the Hornets home games there and the other traveling with the team on the road. "I just go to practice and games, but the down time is kind of different," Smith said, adding that he ends up watching "a lot of cable TV.?

Times-Picayune photographers, meanwhile, are almost non-existent at the top home games, Tatum revealed. Except for the handful of Saints and Hornets games schedule for Baton Rouge, Associated Press photos are used. He also said the Associated Press Sports Editors have come to his aide, helping acquire media guides and stringer contacts in other cities to help with some road coverage.

"We are trying to be smart about what we do," Tatum said. "The paper has been great and we haven't backed off our mission one inch."