‘Times-Picayune’ to end daily print schedule this fall

A new company called NOLA Media Group—encompassing both the The Times-Picayune and its affiliated website, NOLA.com—will end daily publication of the New Orleans newspaper this fall and instead publish only on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, the newspaper announced this morning. “The change is intended to reshape how the New Orleans area’s dominant news organization delivers its award-winning local news, sports and entertainment coverage in an increasingly digital age,” reads the newspaper’s coverage of its own changes, which you can read in its entirety here. The New York Times initially broke the story Wednesday, reporting that Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the New Orleans paper, will apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor, Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann Arbor News, emphasized the paper’s website as a primary distributor of news and—in the process—instituted wholesale layoffs to cut costs. Ricky Mathews, who was recently named incoming publisher of the paper and will also become president of NOLA Media Group, is not immediately providing specifics on how many employees will be affected by the changes, but acknowledges there will be cuts. After The New York Times broke the story, New Orleans’ alternative weekly newspaper, Gambit, reported on some of the internal upheaval occurring in The Times-Picayune newsroom. Read that story here.