Sad times continue in the Big Easy. Layoffs of print media staff at the Times-Picayune are looming and there’s apparently little actual reporting on the blog that’s been hyped as the plan to pick up the news gathering slack when the print edition is cut to just three days a week. One reporter let her frustrations out on management this weekend in a scathing memo.
“Sometimes I just want to scream about what is happening around me” at the newspaper, she writes.
Despite efforts by advertisers, city officials and citizens, who formed The Times-Picayune Citizens’ Group last month, hoping to negotiate with the papers’ owners and maintain a seven day print edition, the paper seems doomed to follow others owned by Advance Publications and operated by Newhouse Newspapers, such as the Ann Arbor News, that ceased daily printing in 2009. Other Advance Publications owned organizations scheduled for similar cutbacks are The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and The Press-Register of Mobile. The business model reminds me a lot of the purchase and gutting of local AM/FM radio and I sometimes wonder if Bain Capital is involved. I also wonder if, in the end, anyone will be left to write the obituary of the Times-Picayune.
