New Orleans business and community leaders are pressing the publisher of their city's only daily newspaper to reverse its decision to reduce print publication to three days a week.
They also are talking with investors, media companies and journalists about setting up print and digital alternatives, should the publisher go ahead with its plan for the Times-Picayune.
The decision by closely held Advance Publications Inc. to no longer publish the Times-Picayune seven days a week has prompted protest from loyal New Orleanians, given the paper's prizewinning coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, and other events. Critics of the move leaped in with a "Save the Times-Picayune" rally on June 4 and restaurants mixing cocktails such as "Picayune Punch" to raise money to fight the change.
Advance's plans, disclosed publicly on May 24, would make New Orleans the largest city in the country without a daily print newspaper. Assuming the plan remains in place—as Advance says it will—the 175-year-old Times-Picayune beginning this fall will be printed only on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
A community like New Orleans that is on the rebound needs a daily newspaper; that is where the civic discourse and dialogue begins.
The Times-Picayune Citizens' Group—an ad hoc committee of more than 100 heads of local businesses, business groups, universities and neighborhood associations, as well as others including NPR news analyst —is trying to persuade Advance to keep the paper's daily schedule, said the president and CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc., a metro area business development group.
The group is also actively exploring alternatives, he said. Those include seeking a buyer for the Times-Picayune, bringing in a national competitor to start a new daily in New Orleans, and creating or working with local digital media groups to start an alternative newspaper.
New York-based Advance said it won't reverse its decision to pare publication, which was made for financial reasons. Economic realities forced the company to make really difficult choices.
Advance—which also owns the Condé Nast stable of glossy magazines, such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as newspapers across the country—has similarly reduced print schedules for some of its papers in Michigan, and announced planned cutbacks at three Alabama papers.
Daily print circulation of the Times-Picayune has fallen sharply in recent years, from more than a 260,000 in 2005 to 133,500 this March, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The Times-Picayune played an astoundingly important role in helping the city rebuild after the 2005 flooding.
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