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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Times-Picayune

1. June 22, 2012 06:50 AM

   “Prophet of Katrina” stays put

   Times-Picayune’s ace environment reporter sticks with Nola Media Group

   By Curtis Brainard

   The man The New York Times called “a prophet of Katrina’s wrath” for his prescient coverage of New Orleans’ vulnerability to hurricanes and flooding has decided to stick with the city’s beleaguered newspaper. On Tuesday, Mark Schleifstein, the Times-Picayune’s environment reporter for the last 28 years, accepted a job offer from the new Nola Media Group, which was formed in...

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2. June 20, 2012 06:50 AM

   Another A1 Times-Picayune press release

   This time the publisher takes to the front page, eliding the gutting of his newsroom

   By Ryan Chittum

   Not content with dominating the Times-Picayune's front page on Thursday with a press release from its editor, the paper ran an awfully similar piece by the new publisher on page one Sunday headlined "The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com are here to stay." As if the Times-Pic needed to remind New Orleanians that its absentee owners have brought in an outsider to...

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3. June 21, 2012 09:22 PM

   Audit Notes: Smart Money, NYT CEO, sushi chefs and nola.com

   Dow Jones lays off staff and goes all-digital with its personal-finance magazine

   By Ryan Chittum

   Dow Jones is shutting down Smart Money magazine, laying off most of the staff and going to a digital-only format just two years after it bought the half it didn't own from Hearst. Adweek: “What consumer wants financial advice in 30-day increments?” Scott Daly, evp and executive media director at Dentsu America, said in an email. “Not this guy. How...

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4. July 26, 2012 11:36 PM

   Audit Notes: more NOLA rumblings, Journatic, well-squawked

   A new buyer emerges in New Orleans, Quick and Sorkin did good, etc.

   By Dean Starkman

   —Can we agree at this point that Advance Publications’s attempt to sell its plans for dramatic newsroom cuts and ramped up online news production at the Times-Picayune as a bold leap into the future—in effect, putting digital lipstick on a hamster—is not going over so well down in the Crescent City? First, there was the generalized uproar. Then, the...

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5. September 25, 2012 06:50 AM

   Audit Notes: newspaper war, inflation fears, executive pay

   The Times-Picayune says it planned to go into Baton Rouge all along

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Times-Picayune plans to move into Baton Rouge to hit back at the Advocate's move into New Orleans. But publisher Ricky Mathews says that move was planned all along, well before the Baton Rouge Advocate announced it would print a daily newspaper in New Orleans to compete with the soon-to-be three days a week Times-Pic. The blog Dump the Picayune...

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6. May 25, 2012 11:09 AM

   David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, on the Times-Picayune cuts

   By David Simon

   It's grievous what is happening to regional newspapers, especially. But the whole industry will continue to collapse until everyone swallows hard and goes behind a paywall. The New York Times has shown us the end of the beginning; they've embraced the paywall and they are seeing significant revenue. The Washington Post, LA Times, others have to follow. Once the content...

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7. October 8, 2012 11:27 AM

   Facing up to the high cost of free news

   Is there a quality argument to support the digital ads-only model?

   By Dean Starkman

   Pretty soon, proponents of free digital news will have to own up to the implications of their model. The structure is flawed. To rely on online ads as the sole source of revenue is both unsound in theory, and in practice it's having disastrous consequences in regional newsrooms, mostly notable at the Times-Picayune and other Advance Publications papers across...

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8. June 13, 2012 10:43 AM

   Heresy on the bayou (updated)

   Times-Picayune drops its restaurant critic

   By Brent Cunningham

   More than the news that it would no longer publish every day; more than the rumor that those left in the newsroom will be compensated, in part, based on the traffic their stories generate; more than the dismay of learning that industry “upheaval,” as one newsroom executive put it, could decimate an outlet that Hurricane Katrina could not… The news...

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9. July 20, 2012 06:50 AM

   How to worry about a clicks-driven Times-Picayune

   A departing reporter's worst-case fears

   By Sarah Carr

   If clicks drove coverage at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans —a more realistic prospect than it’s ever been—what kind of publication would we get? We can look at past traffic and get a rough answer: In a doomsday scenario, we would read only about sex, sports, crime, and more crime. The most clicked on stories in the month of June,...

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10. July 30, 2012 12:30 PM

    New Orleans gets a new Reporter

    NewOrleansReporter.org is one of several news initiatives that will pick up the slack in a post-daily Picayune world

    By Sara Morrison

    News-hungry New Orleanians, take heart: The hole in the city's news scene the cuts to the Times-Picayune's newsroom and print distribution are expected to leave when they take effect (barring a last-minute purchase of the paper) will be filled by no less than three news initiatives, all announced last week. NewOrleansReporter.org, a partnership between the University of New Orleans and...

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11. June 14, 2012 06:50 AM

    New Orleans meets the Hamster Wheel

    The fall of the Times-Picayune

    By Ryan Chittum

    The gutting of New Orleans beloved Times-Picayune and Advance Publications' plan to turn it into a sort of major market AnnArbor.com looks set to bring journalism built on "motion for motion’s sake... volume without thought" to a city built on doing the opposite. For the Newhouses, who own the Times-Pic, the Hamster Wheel is a business model—one the absentee chain...

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12. May 24, 2012 11:20 AM

    The Times-Picayune cuts staff and print runs

    Read CJR coverage on the history of the paper, a vital resource in its region, here

    By Kira Goldenberg

    The news hit late Wednesday night that the storied New Orleans Times-Picayune, the newspaper that served as a community rock in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, will be cutting its print run to three times a week and slicing its staff by up to a third. "We did not make this decision lightly," the new company president, Ricky Mathews, said...

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13. June 15, 2012 06:50 AM

    The Times-Picayune’s front-page press release

    Advance Publication's Alabama papers take even worse hits than New Orleans

    By Ryan Chittum

    You know the backlash is serious when the Times-Picayune wraps itself in Katrina and puts a press release/editorial by the editor on page one of the paper: Great journalism not bound by medium Katrina shows promise of digital age in New Orleans The headline and deck are bad enough, but the text is worse (emphasis mine): In the aftermath of...

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14. September 21, 2012 03:00 PM

    The Newhouses strike back

    The Times-Picayune goes to war with the encroaching Baton Rouge Advocate

    By Ryan Chittum

    After Advance Publications announced it would gut the still-profitable New Orleans Times-Picayune's newsroom and slash publication to three days a week, the Baton Rouge Advocate's Manship family saw an opportunity. The Advocate, which killed its New Orleans bureau a few years ago in cutbacks, said it would open a new bureau and print a New Orleans edition of the paper...

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15. June 6, 2012 06:50 AM

    The Sometimes Picayune

    Want to damage New Orleans (again)? Decimate its newspaper

    By Harry Shearer

    Here, for your reading pleasure, are two familiar cliches: 1. New Orleans is a unique city. 2. The newspaper business is changing. Several days ago, when it was announced that The Times-Picayune would get out of the daily print newspaper business, the second cliche kicked the first one’s ass. This makes no sense to me. There’s more to that first...

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