Making sense of a devastated city.

Roy Casey, who taught me how to be an editorial writer, had a simple philosophy: Stick up for people who can't stick up for themselves, try to keep the government honest, and never be snooty. Those are the lessons that guide me in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Ron's editorial page at The Birmingham News was no ivory tower. To remind us of that, he bought personalized patches one Christmas for our small editorial page staff at the News. These were the sort of patches an auto mechanic might wear sewn to a shirt pocket. Mine is propped against my computer at The Times-Picayune. "Editorial Board, Terri," it says, in red, white, and blue.

It reminds me of Ron, a generous man and a talented journalist whose heart gave out when he was only forty-nine. It also reminds me of the sort of editorial page Ron would want to see.

I've kept the patch on my desk since I left Birmingham for New Orleans nine years ago. It represents my aspirations for my work and for the editorial page at The Times-Picayune. In that way, nothing has changed.

Of course, in reality, everything has changed. More than a thousand people are dead, tens of thousands of homes are in shambles, and the magical city I've loved since I was fourteen is in many ways a ruin. New Orleanians have been scattered from Texas to Hawaii and countless other places that are nothing like home.

I was one of those displaced people. A storm victim, dependent for the first time in my adult life on other people for a place to live, a car to drive--for everything, really.

It is strange being part of a story, but all of us at The Times-Picayune were part of this one. We had to evacuate our building Tuesday morning, twenty-four hours after the storm, as floodwaters rose to the top of the front steps. We essentially picked up an entire newspaper and moved it to another city. Three different cities, in fact. To Baton Rouge, where editors, reporters, and designers put the newspaper together. And to Houma and, eventually, Mobile where the paper was printed.

I was one of a dozen reporters and editors who stayed on the ground in New Orleans in the first days after the storm. Dante Ramos, the deputy editorial page editor, was in the group as well. I wrote my first post-Katrina editorial in a notebook at my dining room table Tuesday afternoon and dictated it by phone for our first online edition after the evacuation. That piece was about the looting of the Wal-Mart store on Tchoupitoulas Street and the police officers who took part.

The next day, I wrote a second editorial as the city devolved into chaos. That was the day that desperate New Orleanians who had been rescued from rising floodwaters were left to roam Interstate 10 without water, food, or hope of rescue. It was also the first day that I cried for my city and my neighbors.

Recently, I found a story online that described a Times-Picayune editorial as angry. Yes, we have been angry at times. We are heartbroken over the destruction and suffering here, some of which were caused by government inefficiency and detachment. We are concerned about the future and whether New Orleans will get the help it needs.

If our editorials have reflected those emotions, then we have done our job. Who better to voice the frustrations of our community? Who better to demand respect for this place and its people?

People wonder how our work has changed since Katrina. It is intense, the hours are long, and the issues are unimaginably complex. Everything here was broken by this storm and has to be put back together. The challenge is to make sure that it is done right--that it is done fairly and efficiently and as quickly as possible.

So, at the heart of it, our job is the same as before Katrina. The difference is that it matters more than ever.

Terri Troncale is editorial page editor for The Times Picayune in New Orleans. E-mail ttroncale@ timespicayune.com