The big news of Thursday was that the New Orleans Times-Picayune will cut back its print edition to three days a week. The New York Times thought the story worthy of the front page. The newspaper's arc from horrible rag to Pulitzer-winning newspaper, community hero during Katrina and now diminished publication continues, with the next step presumably no print edition at all, with just a web site. The move will also result in an undisclosed number of staff layoffs.
The Newhouse family's Advance Publications also announced a similar reduction at papers in Mobile, Birmingham and Huntsville, Ala. These are the type of midsized towns where daily newspapers were believed to have continued strength, unlike major metro areas like Philadelphia and Chicago. The Newhouses a few years ago halted print publication all together in Ann Arbor, Mich., a college town that would supposedly be a strong newspaper market. Perhaps the only future for print newspapers are suburban shoppers or small town weeklies.
Even when the Picayune was horrible, it always captured the local flavor of New Orleans with local columnists and features. News was another story, as if the paper like the city it served lacked a serious work ethic. Then the paper stirred itself with a strong series on the endangered oceans and Louisiana's coastal disappearance, before serving as the major information source during the Katrina flooding. The newspaper in the early days of the Katrina disaster was able to play its role because of its web site, with the print side out of operation. Now, the web site will be the sole source of information four days a week. The Picayune will publish on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday come this fall, not even giving Monday print coverage of Saints games.
Before the paper's renaissance, the Newhouse family was notorious for milking profits without putting adequate resources into the newspaper, and longtime Picayune watchers will wonder if they are crying wolf here and cutting back out of greed. Still, the Picayune's print circulation has plunged from 260,000 to 130,000 since Katrina, reflecting a similar drop in the city's population, although that is coming back.
The NYT article claimed that the Picayune is a fixture at New Orleans barbershops and coffeeshops. Readers there would have helped the paper by actually buying it.