what new orleans can expect when its newspaper goes away

[alocispepraluger102]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/05/24/what-new-orleans-can-expect-when-its-newspaper-goes-away/

Call it Black Thursday for newspapers across the South. In New Orleans, as well as Mobile, Huntsville and Birmingham, Ala., daily newspapers will be no more.

Newhouse Newspapers, a division of Advance Publications, confirmed in memos to the papers’ staffs that they now will publish three days a week, with an increased emphasis on the Web. The news reached the staff of the fabled New Orleans Times-Picayune first (read the memo here).

A similar memo went out to staff members at the Huntsville Times, Mobile Press-Register and the Birmingham News.

But the news was biggest in New Orleans, where the Times-Pic has won accolades and admiration for its determined coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, as well as its long history in documenting the Civil Rights movement, corruption and changes in daily life across the not-yet restored city.

In New Orleans, a new digitally focused company, called Nola Media Group, will be formed to develop “new and innovative ways to provide news and information to the company’s online and mobile readers.”

David Carr, who broke the story in today’s New York Times, says Newhouse will embrace the model that it used in Ann Arbor, Mich. That means a great Web focus and publishing a print edition a few times a week — in the case of the southern Newhouse papers, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

[johnlitweiler]

When did Newhouse acquire the NO Times-Picayune? And the Huntsville Times? 40 years ago when I clipped newspapers for a living, those were good ones. Especially the T-P. In those days the Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery papers were almost as worthless as Gannet or Conrad Black newspapers.

Might local ownership have saved the Times-Picayune? That big thick newspaper sure seems to have meant a lot to people there a few years ago, even after the year of the 2 hurricanes.

Shit, this is gloomy news.

[Chuck Nessa]

Well, less paper will hit the recycle bins. Best thing I can think of.

[GA Russell]

I grew up in New Orleans. My favorite T-P moment occurred ca. 1967.

The sports editor, Bob Roesler, was covering the Kentucky Derby, and picked a horse to win in two minutes flat. And that's exactly what happened!

The next day the big headline read, "Roesler Calls His Shot!"

Edited May 25, 2012 by GA Russell

[Neal Pomea]

"By year’s end a paper version of the Times-Pic will be available only on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. No more Monday recaps of Saints games in print. And let’s imagine the frantic raids on recycling bins next crawfish season in the metro area. Can you even have a crawfish boil and not cover the table with newspaper?"

http://www.theind.com/re/10610-the-digitally-divided

[gmonahan]

I wonder if I, at age 58, will now live to see the total end of paper-published newspapers. Our little local daily is going to three days a week, too.

gregmo

[alocispepraluger102]

article

"Milestone: Integrity – and a Sense of Place

Why AnnArbor.com is the wrong model for the Times-Picayune

BY MARY MORGANJUNE 2, 2012 at 12 pm

"Last month, news broke that owners of the New Orleans Times-Picayune are planning a major restructuring of that publication. The message arrived in Ann Arbor with an eerie familiarity. The same folks owned the former Ann Arbor News, a newspaper they closed in order to create a new company called AnnArbor.com.

A place is more than a mark on a map. These marks denote places called Ann Arbor (green), New Orleans (blue) and New York (pink).

The familiar part of the news includes severe staff reductions at the Times-Picayune and a shift in focus to online delivery, cutting back its printed edition to three days a week.

David Carr of the New York Times reported that changes at the Times-Picayune apparently would be modeled after the transformation in Ann Arbor. The Newhouse family – whose media holdings include the publications in Ann Arbor and New Orleans, among dozens of others nationwide – had made Ann Arbor its testbed for this approach in 2009."