Why New Orleans Should Have a Daily Newspaper

The city of New Orleans has been mired in an epic drama this summer over the fate of its 175-year-old daily newspaper, the award-winning Times-Picayune. The whole episode has been precisely the kind of colorful, high-stakes local story for which newspapers were made. In May, the paper’s current owner, the Newhouse family and its Advance Publications, shocked the city (and its own employees) by announcing that the T-P would lay off a large portion of its staff and begin publishing this fall only three days a week, an unheard-of production schedule for a metro of such size and weird news output. The Times-Picayune is slated to instead become a mostly digital outfit: NOLA.com.

Citizens' groups and local businesses quickly penned open letters of protest. The city’s most influential names – including the archbishop, the presidents of all of the local universities, Wynton Marsalis, Archie Manning and Wendell Pierce – pleaded with the Newhouses to sell to someone who would value the T-P and print it accordingly. New Orleans Saints NFL owner Tom Benson even stepped up and said he would happily be that guy (as previously noted, he has bought some other things in New Orleans lately).