Today's blog is personal. A few weeks ago, David passed on something
he'd heard on the radio -- that the Times Picayune had announced that in order
to try to avoid being forced to shut down completely, it would be publishing
newspapers only three times a week. The news
filled me with such sadness I couldn't work the rest of the day.
The strange thing is, I no longer
live in New Orleans, and - as much as it disappoints my mom - I have never been a
newspaper reader. I've always had the
vague idea it was a kind of backlash of almost growing up in the newspaper
business, or it could be that I was just the 'first wave' of new times. The bottom line was a newspaper company
two-thousand miles away 'down-sizing' had no real effect on me.
This morning, David forwarded the
article that announced that thirty-two percent of their current employees are
to be laid off as of September 30th, 2012. Half of the newsroom staff had received layoffs,
while remaining newsroom employees received offered to move to Nola Media Group
- a new company formed to operate the newspaper using a 'digital strategy'.
I am sitting at my computer
fighting back tears. Three generations
of my family worked at the Times Picayune.
My uncle managed the advertising department, my father's first job after
getting out of the army following World War II was there, and a number of years
later, he met my mother there.
While I didn't run wild in the
place, I grew up there. I can remember
the smell of the ink, the noise of the presses, and the hot lead type coming
out backwards. It was a fascinating
place, bustling with activity--with life.
And now it's dying.
The Times Picayune was founded in
1837, making it one-hundred and seventy-five years old, this year. It is a historic institution. It is one of the oldest papers in the
country. But soon it will only publish
on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. And
even then, they make no promises about how long that will keep them operating
in print.
The fate of newspapers (as well as
traditional publishing houses) has been on the horizon as far back as the
seventies. As with so many other things
in our world, computers changed everything.
I took fewer people to actual run the presses. Paper costs sky-rocketed. However, the coup de grace came with the new millennium
and tablets, smart phones and apps.
Now, I'm about to have my first
book 'e-published' next week, so how can feel like this? I can't give the answer. I only know I feel as though the last tiger
is dying.
