Bad news in the Big Easy: The New Orleans Times-Picayune, that storied city's storied newspaper, has announced it will only print three days a week and that the newsroom staff is being cut.
It's sad not just for the paper, which won two Pulitzers for helping to hold New Orleans together during Hurricane Katrina, but of course for the city itself. As several columnists noted, if ever a town needed a good, strong newspaper it was the colorful and corrupt home of Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras and jazz.
The paper's owners, Advance Publications, said the changes were part of an increased emphasis on the paper's digital presence, but it's not clear to me how the Times-Picayune will beef up its website with fewer reporters. And I'm not the first to question the wisdom of emphasizing digital in one of the nation's poorest cities, where, according to one study, 36 percent of residents still don't have Internet access at home.
