The Times-Picayune is a newspaper in New Orleans. Well known. Well regarded. It has always been the paper-of-record and served New Orleans heroically before, during and after Katrina.
The T-P is about to stop seven day a week print publication and shift to three. That’s what it’s come to. These are tough times for print. Readership is shrinking in an industry with high fixed costs.
The Times-Picayune is jettisoning jobs! 50 journalists will leave. The newsroom will shrink by a third.
The problem is newspapers are special. We really need them.
Newspapers are the true daily record of what’s going on around us. They are the history of everyday life. The stories they cover are often covered only by them.
Newspapers have room for more depth and perspective than TV (though we beat the crap out of them in emotion and immediacy).
It’s the power of a newspaper that you can see what’s important and understand the general order of things without reading any more than the headlines! Story location and size imply a great deal.
A generation has grown up getting their news online. They don’t read newspapers. Shame. It’s a different experience.
Just moving the news online doesn’t work. Advertisers value online readers differently.
This is a sad day for New Orleans and journalism.