Another Paper Cuts Back On Print – and Staff

An ongoing preoccupation among those of us who study the media industries is newspapers’ struggle to find a way to stay afloat financially in an online world.  As has been noted here and other places, readers and advertisers are moving online.  Although newspapers are seeking to follow them, so far, digital revenues have been relatively slim, putting the future of the newsrooms that provide the content (for digital as well as “dead-tree” platforms) in doubt.

We’ve seen another example of this in recent weeks, when it was announced that the New Orleans Times – Picayune, the city’s major daily, would, essentially, no longer be a daily – at least not in print.  In May, Advance Publications, the paper’s owner, indicated that they would begin publishing only three days a week and shift their efforts to the website. (Three papers in Alabama that are also owned by Advance indicated soon afterward that they would be doing the same thing.) It also indicated there would be staff cuts.  Yesterday, they found out exactly how deep those cuts would be – and it’s brutal.

Two hundred people – a third of the staff – were laid off on Tuesday.  This includes about half the newsroom, although the paper says they’re going to hire more people to bring the numbers back up somewhat.  There were similar cuts at the Alabama papers.

You know in the movies, when there are a bunch of people on a plane that’s going down and they start throwing out all the extra weight in an effort to stay aloft?  In principle, this is what the company is trying to do with these measures.  It’s a way to try and get ahead of the trend.  They know the print editions are losing readership, and they’re trying cut their losses (to jettison the costs of the printing and delivering the paper and of paying all that staff) and shift to a leaner, meaner operation and that can turn in a profit on the lower, digital revenues that are expected to be the new normal.

One big question, of course, is what this might mean to the people of New Orleans.  As The Economist has pointed out, this is a region of the country with a history of government corruption and mismanagement (you may remember something about levees failing in the wake of major hurricane a few years ago) – a place that can benefit from journalists in the watchdog role who can keep an eye on public officials and bring problems to public notice.  Now the paper has about half as many newsroom employees to do so. The same source also notes that Louisiana and Alabama have relatively low internet usage rates.  Reading the paper online just may not be an option for many residents.  And so, the question is whether this will negatively affect the lives of the people who live there?