Hasta La Ideas

There was good news Monday night for New York Times Southern correspondent Campbell Robertson, who is based in New Orleans. Executive editor Dean Baquet told a local audience at Loyola University that as long as he is in charge, the paper will always have a physical reporter presence in the city.

Baquet’s speech, the sixth annual Ed Renwick Lecture put on by the school’s Institute of Politics, was titled “From the Big Easy to the Big Apple” and contained another major shout out for his hometown. In the Q&A that followed, moderator Lee Zurwick, a news anchor with local TV station WUVE, asked Baquet to name the best news cities in the U.S. Per the Times-Picayune, the executive editor’s reply:

“Pound for pound, it’s New Orleans and Miami.”

It’s also fitting that Baquet was preceded last year on the Ed Renwick Lecture stage by a panel that included former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. Because for years, Baquet has been talking about making sure the famous quote Edwards gave him during his Times-Picayune days leads his obituary. Now, apparently a done deal:

Baquet noted that he’s made sure his obituary in the New York Times will give him “sole and full credit for the best political quote of all time,” when Edwards told him on a campaign bus that “the only way I can lose (a coming gubernatorial election) is if I’m caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.”

During the lecture, Baquet also made an interesting correlation between a critical New Orleans high school experience and his decision not to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.