Dozens of veteran employees of NOLA Media Group, which owns The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and its website, NOLA.com, lost their jobs today in the third round of layoffs at the company in as many years.
The layoffs—28 full-time and nine part-time employees—were not unexpected. In June, parent company Advance Publications indicated that NOLA Media Group would be merging with the company’s Alabama Media Group to form a “Southeast Regional Media Group.” Still, those affected came exclusively from the newsroom and many had decades of experience covering news in south Louisiana.
On its website, NOLA.com says the company is “restructuring its news operation to reinforce its core journalistic mission.”
The story goes on to quote NOLA Media Group President Ricky Mathews as saying the company’s content team will be comparable in size—and in some cases larger—than other American newsrooms in similarly sized markets.
“It’s a difficult day for us and our colleagues who are losing their jobs,” Mathews is quoted as saying. “We wish them the very best. Aligning our costs with the business realities faced by media organizations around the country is a tough challenge.”
Three years ago, Advance Media announced The Times-Picayune would cut back its print publication schedule to three days a week and focus more resources on its digital operations. That prompted a backlash among readers and provided an opportunity for The Advocate to move aggressively into the New Orleans market.
Poynter Institute analyst Rick Edmonds says it’s too soon to declare Advance Media’s experiment a failure. But he says print advertising revenues continue to fall for The Times-Picayune, as they have for all newspapers, and digital ad revenues have not developed as quickly as they had hoped.
“And with their emphasis on building audience numbers and so keeping NOLA.com free, they are passing on the revenue boost most American newspapers got with paywalls,” he says.
As to whether The Advocate has won what some called the newspaper war between the two publications, Edmonds says no. But he adds: “But The Advocate’s persistence damages NOLA/T-P as a business.”
—Stephanie Riegel
