The New Orleans Times-Picayune May Reduce Frequency of Publication -- NY Times

The change in organizational structures across all departments will lead to a reduction in the overall size of the workforce. Details are still being worked out, Martin said.

“There are always painful choices when you begin a process that will lead to people losing their jobs,” Martin said.

 

It's an interesting move, certainly, one that makes me sad. But we've speculated for years in our tiny newsroom that metro dailies would eventually all do this.

 

Who cares about poors? They don't buy ads.

Or were you implying that we are in the information business, and one of those Founding Fathers thought we should put some emphasis on having a well-informed populace?

 

I feel bad for all the folks in Louisiana, Alabama and elsewhere who don't have daily access to nola.com and whatever other dumbed-down (content wise) web sites come out of this horrible decision.

I feel really bad for all the people who will be forced out of jobs in New Orleans, Alabama and elsewhere.

And mostly, I have a horrible feeling that the Times-Picayune is a key domino in the accountants' rush to abandon print editions (and the jobs that go with them) at major metro dailies across the country.

 

In other words, the CEO needs a bonus and the shareholders want a earnings report.

 

Playing the (mild) contrarian as someone who's survived more years than I care to admit in this business: It's not an accounting trick. Or a conspiracy. The couple of generations where tens of thousands of newspaper employees, supported by full-run print advertising with no proven metrics, prospered in professional-level careers is ending. Two-page Dillards/Macys/Robinsons May/Sears ads are going away. Classified is gone. Every six months, print circulation goes down another 5 to 10 percent in most markets. The business model is not sustainable, and while some (older folks) will feel a loss without having a 60-point headline on the big news (or sports) of the day in print, most consumers don't care. I'd rather read Fangraphs than my website, which is outstanding on its macro level, and I don't pay a nickel to follow freeAroldisChapman. If this becomes more of a hobby or niche, then that's what it will be.

 

I would not mind any of this -- really -- as long as the amount of news, sports and feature coverage of the community stays the same in an online-only model.

Obviously, I have my doubts. Hope I'm wrong.

 

They did hire a fair amount of Ann Arbor staffers for the first year or so, but some very good writers and photographers got the axe around the first anniversary.

They were then replaced by college grads (mostly from University of Michigan). You'll be hard pressed to find a reporter that crosses US 23 and covers anything in Ypsilanti, which is six miles away.

Example: AA.com reported that Big Lots was taking over a former Borders store. Instead of going out and taking a photo of the Big Lots location in Ypsilanti to run with the story, they pulled a photo of a Big Lots storefront off a wikipedia page.

 

I have a ton of friends down in Mobile on the desk and this is heartbreaking.

 

Well of course. It takes a lot of talent and hard work to decide to just cut your paper down to 3 days a week and dump a lot of jobs. The CEO needs to be rewarded for making this very tough decision that hardly anyone else has the ability to make.

 

I suspect they may run a free throw expanded sports section on Mondays during football season.

It would mean a design staff working Sundays but you are already going to have reporters out Saturday and Sunday covering games, then it is just a matter of people reading the copy and putting the pages together. It would only two or three people to do.

If advertisers will support it and I suspect they will, with the following LSU and the Saints have.

 

Sports fucks up all of these master plans. Generally, most papers' news coverage is government- and education-driven. Well, none of that happens on Saturday and Sunday. There's little to no news on the weekend, we can make Monday's paper small or eliminate it. But sports is always the opposite. There are always games on Saturday and Sunday. Our Monday paper would get blown off the driveway by a moderate breeze, yet we're supposed to have full NFL coverage, baseball, etc. Tuesday's paper is equally tiny, yet Monday has become a big sports day because of the success Monday Night Football, and now (sometimes) the BCS Championship, and the NCAA basketball championship game.
Sports is killing newspapers ... or is it vice-versa?