Four leading reporters and editors from The Times-Picayune, including Pulitzer Prize winners who covered Hurricane Katrina, signed up to work for The Advocate Wednesday, a week after businessman John Georges bought the daily newspaper and promised to beef up its operations in New Orleans.Aside from James Gill's and Jarvis Deberry's columns and the still quite robust sports coverage, I'm having a hard time coming up with much reason to look at the T-P anymore. The Advocate still has a long way to go to get to where it can cover as much ground as it needs to. It also needs a more active website with the capacity to post breaking news throughout the day.
Sooner or later John Georges is bound to do something screwy with his new toy but for now he's building a better one; one that looks like it's trying to be a serious newspaper. While he's doing that, I suppose it's worth supporting that effort with reservations.
As for the overall "state of journalism" or whatever in New Orleans, I think we're probably slightly worse off than we had been. There are still good people doing good reporting but it's reaching a more fragmented audience. I know there's some effort to mitigate that via resource sharing and "alliances" and stuff but it's not quite what it ought to be. Not yet anyway. Maybe a decent daily paper will help there.
Update: Hmm... looks like Georges may have opened a vein.
"If Gordon and Martha go," a city reporter told Gambit Saturday night, "we all go."
1 comment:
I wonder we the "we all" refers to in that statement - the remaining veteran reporters? Any of the new folks brought on for lower wages, to write mainly features? I'm wondering too how much of a divide there is in the staff's sense of identity. That would be sad, and uncomfortable, and I wish the new kids well, but I know too that it was awful for the folks who were being laid off to see the new folks in the newsroom, going through orientation while they were preparing to pack up and start looking for work.
I really hate this.
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