Times-Picayune cuts half of newsroom staff

Times-Picayune reporter Ramon Vargas, left, pats the back of movie critic Mike Scott as they walk into the newspaper's offices after learning learning their fate by the company in New Orleans, June 12, 2012. / AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

(AP) NEW ORLEANS - The Times-Picayune said Tuesday 200 employees will lose their jobs when one of the nation's oldest daily newspapers shifts its focus to online news and publishes just three days a week beginning this fall.

The paper said 84 of the newsroom's 173 employees were cut at the 175-year-old paper. Advertising, circulation and other departments also were affected. The change means New Orleans will become the largest metro area in the nation without a daily newspaper in the digital age.

In Alabama, three major daily newspapers laid off about 400 employees, many of them in the newsrooms at The Birmingham News, the Press-Register in Mobile and The Huntsville Times.

All four papers will continue to publish on their websites, and online access will remain free.

The newspapers' parent company, Advance Publications, is shifting its focus in the digital age. Papers have struggled in recent years as print advertising declined during the recession, and newspapers have yet to learn how to make online advertising as profitable as its printed counterpart.

News of the pending changes first broke late last month and was greeted with dismay In New Orleans. A rally in support of keeping The Times-Picayune a daily drew hundreds of people outside a popular restaurant last week.

Community leaders and a group of advertisers that includes an auto dealership, one of the area's largest real estate agencies, jewelers and a regional grocery chain have called on the parent company to keep the daily publication.

"Many readers can't imagine the morning without our newspaper in their hands," The Times-Picayune editor, Jim Amoss, said in a video posted on the paper's affiliated website, NOLA.com. "I understand that. I'm a print guy. I grew up in this business. But I'm also a news guy, a journalist and a New Orleans native. My priorities are to cover the news of the New Orleans area, to have the best reporters investigate and explain the complexities of this politically byzantine community and to write about our culture, our food, our music, our sports mania."

The staff reductions are effective Sept. 30.

Job casualties in New Orleans included some of the city's most experienced writers and photographers, many of whom announced their own departure on a Facebook page by simply posting "-30-," an old copy editor's code for "end of story."

Peter Finney, a sports writer for the paper since 1945, is being laid off but has been asked to write a freelance column, the paper said. Managing editors Peter Kovacs and Dan Shea, among the newsroom leaders during the paper's Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, have not been asked to stay. Brett Anderson, the current restaurant critic for the food-obsessed city, is leaving for a fellowship.

Employees who took part in Tuesday's meetings described an emotional scene that played out over the course of the day among colleagues who have worked together for many years.

Reporter Barri Marsh Bronston said she was being let go after 31 years.

"These last three weeks have been unbearable, but I'm feeling a sense of relief right now," she said in a post on Facebook. She did not want to be interviewed but gave permission for her comment to be used.

Throughout the day, employees met with various managers and were told either that they would have a job with the new company, Nola Media Group, or they were offered severance packages. Some will later be able to apply for positions in the new operation, the paper said.

The Times-Picayune was acquired by the Newhouse-family run Advance chain in the 1960s. The current news operation was rooted in the combination of The Times-Picayune, a morning newspaper, and its afternoon companion, The States-Item, in 1980.

After the merger, the newspaper expanded coverage with the opening of bureaus in the New Orleans suburbs. It earned two Pulitzer Prizes in the 1990s and then later two more for its reporting of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

[unoforever]

This experimentation is occurring because Newhouse/Advance Publications thinks that its DEEP SOUTH holdings are a green field that won't engender much protest. We in New Orleans however are not taking this news quietly. Indeed, nola.com -- The Times-Picayune's website, has been inundated with so much criticism that it just changed its comment section's format -- expressly to censor comments it doesn't like (even as posters are otherwise abiding by the site's terms of service).

Before this is all over a bunch of us will be going to Newhouse/Advance HQ in New York City to bring this rotten decision back on their heads. This is not journalism -- just naked profiteering.

[alphaa10000]

PROFIT AND LOSS

Once upon a time, the managing editor of a newspaper was often the owner/publisher, and was personally involved with the profession. Today, the owner/publisher is seldom personally involved, and often cultivates a distance as member of "management", with the editorial staff regarded as labor.

This artificial barrier immediately robbed newspapers of much of their dynamism. Publishers now regard their newspapers as more of an investment than the community asset they can and should be. With such an attitude, newspaper management is much less involved with editorial policy, and much more with profit and loss, trading corporate stock, merger and acquisition.

Today's owners made their newspapers more "efficient", only to discover someone had drained the life out of them. Not surprisingly, the decline of the newspaper exactly parallels the decline of the urban community.

[ludvig1-2009]

What a bummer. It's going on all across the country. They want to increase what I pay for a paper by 300% and when I turn them down, they offer 3 day delivery and then call me repeatedly telling me about a special deal which is to pay for the paper weekly which if you multiply it by 52 you get a deal which is worse than the 300% version. I would have kept the paper if it had been 7 days, but they only want to deliver it just before the weekend and on Sunday, but the only New York Times Crossword I can complete seems to come out on Monday, the easiest puzzle of the week.

[alphaa10000]

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR CONTENT

Newspaper owners complain about declining revenue, and then stiff-arm loyal readers who want to return to quality, engaging content.

Ironically, the migration of many print newspapers to the web has increased the demand for copy and quality content. But that realization has not yet reached corporate management, fixated on the idea of a massive increase in revenue without paying conventional newspaper costs-- paper, printing, delivery, marketing and writers/editors. If they could, they would launch a "robo-paper" which works a 24-hour day and somehow creates content elevated above the average shopping circular.

Fortunately, many web-based newspapers already understand the web actually increases demand for good content, and they are running various experiments on what works best. Although it is much too early to conclude newspapers have begun a renaissance, let us hope the well-established papers have the intelligence to keep their talented writers and editors.