Here’s a really interesting article on how the New Orleans Times-Picayune managed to keep publishing last week, even after evacuating its headquarters. For several days last week it printed only PDF versions of the paper. (Update: here are all the PDFs from the past week.)

The evacuated employees were sent to two locations. By midafternoon Tuesday, many had arrived in Houma, La., where The Courier was offering food, computers, phone lines and, although spotty, Internet connections….

About 12 journalists, led by Dan Shea, a managing editor, stayed in Houma that night, posting news on the Web site and trying to put together an issue of the paper in portable document format, or pdf, which allows for a traditional newspaper layout.

The team had none of their production software and templates, and no access to any of The Times-Picayune’s fonts, and was struggling with rolling blackouts. Still, Mary Chauvin, a copy editor, was able to replicate the look of the paper on the fly by cobbling together graphic elements from earlier online editions.

The paper managed to resume printing on Friday, using the Courier’s presses.

And indeed, by Friday morning, The Times-Picayune had managed to resume its print editions again. It printed 50,000 copies at The Courier -a “seat of the pants” press run, Mr. Amoss said, its size a guess of how much of an audience the paper would have.

The paper was distributed, using the same delivery trucks that had ferried the staff to safety, to subscribers throughout Louisiana and to the habitable areas of New Orleans. And it was also delivered in bulk to shelters, where it was given away.