The oldest newspaper in New Orleans just fired its entire staff.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

David Fahrenthold Retweeted

Just brutal. https://www.wsj.com/graphics/local-newspapers-stark-divide/?mod=article_inline&mod=hp_lead_pos4 …

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Equally devastating, this graph. Keep in mind that Google and Facebook now control more than 60 percent of all digital ad revenue.

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The Times-Picayune's new owner calls the newspaper "a trophy." Yet the entire newsroom has been told they're going to be laid off.

Here's my full story on the final days of New Orleans' newspaper war —>

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/bj9mv4/were-drinking-now-the-oldest-newspaper-in-new-orleans-just-fired-its-entire-staff … via @vicenews

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“WE’RE DRINKING NOW”: THE OLDEST NEWSPAPER IN NEW ORLEANS JUST FIRED ITS ENTIRE STAFF

“WE’RE DRINKING NOW”: THE OLDEST NEWSPAPER IN NEW ORLEANS JUST FIRED ITS ENTIRE STAFF

“We’re drinking now”: The oldest newspaper in New Orleans just fired its entire staff

By David Uberti May 3, 2019

One of the nation’s last local newspaper wars is officially over. ... Owners of the New Orleans Advocate announced Thursday that they had bought The Times-Picayune, ending a six-year battle for media turf in a cultural capital grappling with inequality and the long-term fallout from Hurricane Katrina.

In the end, the upstart Advocate, a Baton Rouge-based organization that launched its New Orleans edition in late 2012, overtook the 182-year-old Times-Picayune, which wilted in recent years under wayward ownership of the national chain Advance Publications. The purchase announced Thursday promised to create a unified daily newspaper and website — publishing under both organizations’ flags — held in local hands.

“This is a trophy,” John Georges, the New Orleans grocery wholesaler who now owns both publications, told VICE News. “We've been competing with the Times-Picayune for the past six years, and we were very successful. But despite that success, there is overlap.” ... In an industry where companies are frantically consolidating to cut budgets and stay afloat, that’s code for job losses. “I bought the assets yesterday,” Georges added, as opposed to the newsroom.

YOU'RE FIRED

An official from Advance told Times-Picayune employees Thursday afternoon that they would all be laid off as part of the deal, according to three staffers. The journalists will keep their jobs for the next 60 days as the deal is finalized and the merging of the brands is completed, they said. Staffers will have the chance to apply for new jobs in the unified newsroom. But the details of that process, including how many positions might be available, remain thin.

Times-Picayune staffers were shocked, employees told VICE News, with some crying in the newsroom and others tweeting out the sad news. The staff went to a bar across the street to commiserate about the work the newspaper had produced amid intense financial pressure in recent years. ... “We’re drinking now,” one former staffer said on Thursday night. “There’s not much else to do.”
....

[SCVDem]

1. Replaced by idiots

Who cannot spell nor use correct grammar.

These rummies make my head hurt!

[localroger]

2. The T-P has been doomed since the decision to not be daily

That opened the door for the Baton Rouge Advocate to come into NOLA offering an actual daily paper. They hired many T-P refugees and did a better job of being NOLA's paper than the T-P had done since just after Katrina. It was only a matter of time before they buried the T-P and I'm just glad it didn't drag out longer. NOLA was a one-paper town for most of my life and now it will be again.

[FakeNoose]

3. We all must support our local newspapers and media outlets

This is happening everywhere, not just in the major cities. Pretty soon there will be no "free" press left, and we're allowing them to die by not supporting them. I'm an early adopter of the electronic version (vs. ink-on-paper version) of the news, but I'm also a daily subscriber of my local newspaper. That would be the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Please subscribe to whatever local newspaper you feel deserves your support. Monthly subscriptions run maybe $10 per month, more or less. What's that, maybe two beers per month? It's worth it!

[iluvtennis]

5. Ditto

[Demovictory9]

4. Sad. Scary

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Buying something to kill it is as despicable as buying a puppy to kill it. . . . nt