1. I can understand why the T/P wants its writers to write about their personal experiences, but those are the kind of stories that the editors need to look at most critically. The writer’s miffed because her neighbor doesn’t weed her yard aggressively enough and she can’t be objective — good luck when it’s a vacant lot. I grew up next to Betsy vacant lot and it was a great (if mildly hazardous) playground for a kid to live next to, but it was covered with weeds until the early seventies.

   I’ll say it again, the T/P wasn’t that good post-K. The Pullitzer was mostly for continuing to publish. Read the archives, after that one great editorial criticizing Bush, the editors and staff seemed to be afraid of looking like a home town paper or of being accused of liberal bias. The was almost no criticism of Bush or the federal response from the time of the Jackson Square speech until Marty Bahamonde’s testimony made it safe to criticize Washington again. So T/P op-ed writers defended the mayor’s handling of the crisis months later during the election, but didn’t defend city government when pictures of flooded school buses were all over the air waves — they had a national online readership at the time.

   Though I’m sure the links (to Picayune articles) no longer work, here’s what I wrote when I got frustrated reading the T/P at the time:

   http://bayoustjohndavid.blogspot.com/2005/11/not-so-fast-with-that-pulitzer.html

   http://bayoustjohndavid.blogspot.com/2005/11/times-picayune-is-still-corporate-rag.htm

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