I'll admit to some mixed feelings about Anne Milling's rally around the T-P movement.
On the one hand, the destruction of the city's only major daily newspaper is an outrage. Many talented reporters, editors, and support staff will be losing their jobs because of a horrible decision made by a disinterested out of state corporation. A population with inadequate access to broadband internet will be poorly served by the crappy website expected to take the paper's place. It's a travesty and I've said as much repeatedly.
On the other hand, we would do well to remember that, while the T-P had in recent decades become the "paper of record" by default, its editorial bent remained true to its upper class roots. The T-P stretched itself to fill its role as the city's only daily. It employed several excellent reporters. It made an effort to cover the city as a whole. But it remained the Phelpses' and the Millings' paper. It covered New Orleans from a top-down perspective by default.
Even now as the paper is being shuttered by the Newhouses, we're reading many of its elitist backers lay the blame for this outrage upon their presumed social and intellectual inferiors. If only the internet weren't so interested in "divisiveness" opined Jed Horne last week, none of these bad things would be happening to our oracles of consensus. If only the NOLA.com commenters weren't so full of bile, implied this bilious anonymous commenter, the professional arbiters of good taste would still be free to tell us what to think.
It sucks that we're reduced to begging for the survival of this elitist rag because it happens to be the last remnant of a once-robust New Orleans press. But that's where we are. Our city isn't getting its due here. At the same time, it's tempting to think that some of our "betters" and their enablers are getting theirs.
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