The New Orleans Times-Picayune May Reduce Frequency of Publication -- NY Times

The idea was born during Katrina when the print product wasn't available. It's too much too little too late I'm afraid.

 

Of course you're going to have to edit for length as well as content. That is sort of a given.

But haven't most of us had days when the newshole was too small for the amount of legit news that day and you had to cut plenty of stuff just to get it on the page? ("Too much shit in too small of a bag" as one news editor was fond of saying.) That's the nice part about the web. If you have three stories, post them. If you have 12 stories, post all 12. I wasn't intending it as a license for reporters to ramble on endlessly when there was no need to.

Maybe one of the blessings in disguise of the cutbacks in space in recent years is that it has forced us all to learn how to write and edit tighter. It certainly did with me. One of the tips I often give younger reporters is that they are not required to quote every person they interview. One said to me "Well, I interviewed (insert name) and he'll be expecting his name to be in the story." I told him if he didn't give you anything good, don't feel obligated to include it simply because you talked to him for a few minutes.

 

Warren Buffett weighs in:

http://jimromenesko.com/2012/06/01/warren-buffett-ive-been-following-the-times-picayune-situation-with-interest/

From the letter:

<i>I don’t know any of the facts on their profitability but was really surprised when they made the announcement. It seems to me that three days a week is simply unsustainable over the longer term. Either a publication is a newspaper or a periodical and I think three days a week crosses the line.</i>

 

I do agree with this take. I think you either have to be a weekday paper, a weekly or a daily. I can't see three days a week being successful for any reason.

 

Lots of paper have been twice weekly or thrice weekly for many years. Some papers dropped the Monday edition. Others never had a Saturday (or Sunday) edition. They come in all shapes and sizes.

Anyone ever worked Christmas Eve and muttered "Why on earth must we have a paper on Christmas morning?"

 

I don't know about you but when the richest man in the world says it isn't a good idea, it's probably not a good idea. I dunno, just thinking aloud on the subject.

 

What to do? What to do? What to do?

Cut workers? Cut printing costs? Cut delivery costs? We can't sell any more than we already are. What other ways are there to increase revenue? Maybe we could charge people to work for us and bring in revenue that way!

 

Since many people seem to want to compare this to Ann Arbor, a former Ann Arbor Newsie does just that...
Bravo, Mary...

http://annarborchronicle.com/2012/06/02/milestone-integrity-and-a-sense-of-place/
The news from New Orleans coincided with an ultimately successful effort by The Ann Arbor Chronicle to push AnnArbor.com to correct a shockingly flawed analysis related to fire protection that had been originally reported by Ryan Stanton back in May of 2011. Within days of publication last year, Chronicle editor Dave Askins alerted Stanton to the likely source of the factual errors in Stanton’s piece.

Askins correctly analyzed the Ann Arbor fire department’s reports that Stanton had misinterpreted, and soon after that The Chronicle published that analysis. It wasn’t until this week, though, that AnnArbor.com’s “chief content officer,” Tony Dearing, wrote a column acknowledging the fact that the response times reported by Stanton were inaccurate. But Dearing’s accounting of AnnArbor.com’s errors is misleading and incomplete – in part because it fails to take responsibility for obvious reporting mistakes, blaming sources instead.

In that respect, Dearing’s column continues a pattern of disingenuous communication by AnnArbor.com with the community it purports to serve.


And a reader (albeit a PR person for Ann Arbor Schools) writes...
"Currently I am in a conversation with annarbor.com over the use of their sources – most recently 14 year olds who are approached via twitter for an “interview”. Really? Is this journalism? I know social media brings new challenges to reporting but finding your source via tweets with 14 years olds is not good journalism in my book, and frankly crosses the ethical line for me. "

 

The future is here and it doesn't look very pretty.

 

The Picayune laid off 82 today, including Peter Finney, the sports columnist who has been there longer than most of our parents have been alive:

http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2012/06/times-picayune_employees_to_le.html

They also cut their food critic...not that that's important in New Orleans.

 

This will not end well.

 

My God. Peter Finney is the Times Picayune. Ugh.