Entire New Orleans Times-Picayune staff axed after sale to competitor

nypost.com ^ | May 3, 2019 | 9:53pm | Updated May 06, 2019 | By Keith J. Kelly

[Red Badger]

The Newhouse family sold the 182-year-old daily The Times-Picayune and its website, nola.com, to a scrappy New Orleans competitor, and the entire staff is being laid off. That has stirred worries across the other papers in the family’s Advance Publications empire.

A total of 161 staff members are being laid off, according to a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice filed with the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which listed 65 reporter and editor jobs in the bloodbath.

John and Dathel Georges, the husband-and-wife team that owns the rival New Orleans Advocate, are buying The Times-Picayune from Newhouse’s Advance Local, which has owned it since 1962.

The Advocate plans to publish a seven-days-a-week paper using both brands on the masthead starting in early June and will merge both websites under nola.com.

“Could this happen to the Staten Island Advance, Jersey Journal or Star-Ledger?” asked one worried source, referring to metropolitan newspapers owned by the family that also owns the glitzy but struggling Condé Nast.

Randy Siegel, chief executive of Advance Local, said the company does not intend to sell any other papers. “This was a one-off,” Siegel told The Post. “We’re all terribly sad about the outcome.”

Stunned Times-Picayune staffers heard they were being laid off late Thursday.

[Red Badger]

Libertarian?.................../s

[Jim Noble]

They all should learn to code....

[Political Junkie Too]

You do wonder if newspapers as we have known them, have a long term future.

It's so much easier to change history when all the news is digital.

-PJ

[SunkenCiv]

Radio, TV, and finally the wireless stream (and of course, greeniac AGW worried about deforestation and C02 from decomposing newsprint) are causing a huge shakeout. But you knew that.

Only way to find out about the new owner:

https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/

[dfwgator]

They all went down to the Audubon Zoo, and dey all axed for you.

[Richard Kimball]

When I lived in New Orleans in the seventies, the Times-Picayune was distinctly New Orleans. One of the columns was called Lagniappe, which meant "a little something extra thrown in." The people working there knew the city. It was uniquely New Orleans, like coffee and chicory. In a transient society, few people seem to have roots, and there's less local culture and more interchangeable content. No local celebrities, just nationwide celebrities.

[shotgun]

Then they’ll try to get you to pay more for a monthly online subscription than you would for the printed edition.