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Jon Friedman's Media Web

Ripping the soul out of New Orleans

6/15/12 12:01 AM ET (MarketWatch)Print

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Right before our eyes, they are ripping the soul out of the city of New Orleans.

It's official that the 175-year-old New Orleans Times-Picayune, a daily which won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, will be published only three times a week -- as it cuts hundreds of jobs and half of the newsroom staff, all but gutting the newspaper. The Times-Picayune's emphasis will move to its website, NOLA.com.

The Times-Picayune's daily print circulation has tumbled to about 134,000, as of last March, from 260,000 in 2005 -- the year that Katrina struck, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

New Orleans, which goes by the handle of The Big Easy, is one of the most joyous, soulful and uniquely American cities. My theory is that there are three (maybe four) distinctly American cities, places you couldn't duplicate anywhere in the world.

I definitely have New York, New Orleans and Los Angeles (and maybe San Francisco) on my list.

New Orleans knows adversity, all right. Its citizens heroically survived the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, maintaining their dignity despite the devastation. Today, a new challenge to the city's hearty spirit has arrived.

The "they" in my lead sentence are the business people who comprise the media landscape, executives, publishers, advertisers and consultants. Are they the enemy? They aren't evil or diabolical. Like everyone else, they're out to make a buck.

But it's getting tougher in the old-media business of daily newspapers because the action has shifted to the Web. And the media elite is still grappling with a way to make good money online.

Goodbye, broadsheet. Hello, Internet.

This transfer of publishing might is typical of the dreadful economic state of American newspapers, which have struggled terribly in the 21st century digital age. In fact, three Alabama newspapers have suffered similar fates to the Times-Picayune.

We've seen the Rocky Mountain News close in early 2009. Around that time, too, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer became an online-only "paper."

Yes, we are fortunate that the Times-Picayune is not suffering the fate of the Rocky Mountain News and completely going away. And who knows? The NOLA.com website may yet reach heights that the employees of the print paper hadn't ever dreamed of.

Still, let's not kid ourselves. The collapse of a daily newspaper is a punch in the stomach to the soul of a great city. We take for granted what we have in the pages of a city's daily.

There is the local pride we feel in reading our high school, college and pro sports scores. We once scanned the stock market results every day. Thanks to USA Today, the weather is now big news. We feel sentimental when we check the obituaries and hopeful about the wedding announcements.

Sure, nowadays, we can get all of that -- and lots more information -- on the Web. But it isn't the same. Granted, the Web is trumpeted as an improvement in terms of owners' finances and user's convenience.

It also offers immediacy, great graphics and interactive communications with the blessed readers. A lot of people will mourn the death of newspapers. But time marches on.

History will note that the Times-Picayune didn't go quietly. People held rallies for several days to preserve the paper.

"It's a morning ritual," Constable Lambert Boissiere, a former city councilman and state senator, said recently on NPR.com. "You know, you get the paper, get your cup of coffee, have a little breakfast or whatever, paging through the articles you want to read. Then you had the conversations at lunch about the things you read in the paper.

"So, all that's going to be gone," Boissiere hammered home. "I can't imagine myself and my friends sitting in front of the computer every morning, going through the different sections to read the articles. I don't see that happening."

MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE DAY: Does the collapse of yet another U.S. daily newspaper make you feel sad or nostalgic? Or do you accept this as a piece of 21st century reality?

What do you think? Feel free to post a comment below.