Harry Shearer has written an insightful piece in CJR that really sums up the really stupid thinking of the venture capital crowd that’s taken over the newspaper industry. This is the kind of thinking that’s killing journalism. Come to think of it, it’s killing everything else, too:
So: a city of tightly knit neighborhoods, of varying classes, with mainly local retail. Yet, the model for Advance Publication’s demotion of the New Orleans Times-Picayune metro daily into the Neverland of thrice-weekly print publication—gee, what day is it? Is there a paper today?—was based on, wait for it, a college town in Michigan. Ann Arbor, to be exact. And this plan is being applied to three papers in Alabama, as well—the Press-Register in Mobile; The Huntsville Times; The Birmingham News. All quite similar to New Orleans, of course. This is the kind of cookie-cutter decision-making that gives absentee ownership a bad name.
The Times-Picayune is not Starbucks or Rite-Aid or Winn-Dixie sitting on the sidelines waiting for the recovery. It is the paper people in New Orleans love, or love to hate. You’ve probably read the relevant stats: the TP enjoys the highest rate of print penetration of all dailies in the 50 biggest metro areas.
And 36 percent of New Orleanians are not connected to the Internet. Consider also that nola.com, the website to which Advance Publications now assumes people seeking news in the city will drift, is widely recognized as one of the ugliest and worst-designed such sites—aside from the others in the Advance newspaper stable, all of which are forced by Advance headquarters New York to use the same digital template.
Okay, the argument goes, the decision to turn the paper into the Sometimes-Picayune may ignore local realities both cultural and statistical, but it’s Advance’s bat and ball. If they want to play only on the days when advertisers really want to buy space, that’s their right.
Yet it is funny the word “right” should pop up. The newspaper business lives off the benefits of free speech, which all citizens enjoy, but none more than news outlets, who put out so much of it. The First Amendment offers government protection against almost all lawsuits from angry politicians, lazy ballplayers, and dim-witted celebrities whose exploits may be reported to their dismay. Should there be a societal expectation that the proprietors of such privileged enterprises owe a little something back—perhaps a calm acceptance of a lower profit margin than could be attained, say, in the car-leasing business? The TP, after all, is still reported to be profitable.
On the other hand, Advance has signaled—by this stumble-footed decision—that they don’t understand the New Orleans market. You can’t care about what you don’t understand.
Decades ago someone in the local press noted that the difference between Atlanta and Birmingham was the difference between colonizers and local power. In Birmingham the most wealthy, influential people in the area lived in Pittsburg. Birmingham was a colony to them. In Atlanta the most powerful, well-to-do members of the community live in town and raise their families here. Seems to make a difference.
Those who own the world and all of its parts (1%) now live on floating islands that belong to no country. As for the rest of us…..well, your guess is as good as the next guys.
Shearer is a millionaire mqany times over -If that newspaper is so important to him and NOLA, why doesn’t he put his money where his mouth is and buy that newspaper.
A word about Wisconson. The average person resents it when the people that they hire with their tax dollars to represent them live better than they do. Those would be the public employees and elected officials who enjoy better health care plans, higher wages and a superior retirement programs. The Left should embrace this resentment and use it to their advantage by demanding that every worker be afforded the same benefits. The Republicans (1%) equalize things by bringing every worker to a lower place. The Democrats need to call for every worker to be raised up.