This blog will sell to John Georges for one million dollars

He probably won't buy it, though.  He seems to have it in his head that there are too many "dangerous people" on the internet.  And, from his point of view, maybe that's true. Those people will just bring up any old thing if you don't watch them closely.  So I guess we shouldn't be too surprised that when Georges does decide to buy a website, he does it mainly to fire everybody.

New Orleans Advocate owners Dathel and John Georges have purchased The Times-Picayune and its nola.com website from the Newhouse family’s Advance Local Media.

The Advocate will publish a seven-day, home-delivered newspaper in New Orleans using the brands and features of both publications. The new paper will debut in June. The two papers’ websites will be combined under the nola.com brand around the same time.

According to Georges, this is being done in order to "ensure a strong print and online news company for years to come.” But you'd forgive us if we weren't entirely sold on the proposition that the "brands and features" of the two papers are worth as much to the reader minus the work of the actual reporters who once produced their content.  Georges laid off every single T-P employee effective 60 days from now. We haven't been told how many can expect to be hired on to the new company but the early indications are it will be very few. I guess, technically, you can call that an "expansion" of the Advocate.  The Advocate is certainly calling it that, anyway. 

The Advocate will be expanding its New Orleans news, advertising and circulation staff by hiring from current nola.com and Times-Picayune employees, and will increase its coverage of suburban communities, sports, and arts and entertainment, and also improve its opinion pages.

How will they be improving the opinion pages, exactly?  Somehow I doubt the opinions will improve. The current version of the New Orleans Advocate opinion page prominently features the conventional wisdom of political columnist Stephanie Grace, the curmudgeonly wit of veteran James Gill, and the all out right wing nuttery of Dan Fagan. Gill and Grace get some things right some of the time but, mostly, this is a centrist-to-conservative leaning page. The T-P's Jarvis DeBerry is a pretty moderate columnist himself but would add a relatively more progressive voice to this lot if they were to bring him on.  We've not seen or heard anything to indicate the Advocate management is inclined to go that direction, though. While pitching the Advocate's new online paywall to readers last month, editor Peter Kovacs chose to highlight the work of only one columnist in particular.

Six days a week, Smiley Anders captures the wit, kindness and good humor of the people of Louisiana. And even if the rest of the news centers on crime or crisis, you can’t read his column without walking away an optimist.

But maybe none of this matters. The significance of a newspaper opinions page is greatly diminished in the age of social media. Takes, even "good' takes, are cheap. Write your own whenever you like and share them with your friends. The value produced by a newspaper is in the actual news reporting. And John Georges just fired a whole lot of reporters.

It's never a good time for that. But it doesn't improve matters that Georges fired everybody during the height of the legislative session. At the very moment the mayor and the tourism industry are supposedly on the verge of a deal, and as the city council prepares to make a major decision on the future of the short term rental problem, nearly half of the beat reporters responsible for keeping an eye on that stuff just learned they're about to be on the street.

If any of that is worrisome to Lens editor Jed Horne, he isn't about to tell us. Instead he spends most of this editorial gloating. 

But starting a rival paper that was better than the T-P wasn’t the end of the drama. Now Kovacs and Shea  will run the whole shebang for Georges. Meanwhile, the buzz on the street is that the remaining T-P staff has been given layoff notices and 60 days of severance pay. Enjoying the pick of the litter, The Advocate is expected to offer jobs to a handful of reporters who toiled for its former rival. The reconfigured paper will begin publishing in June.

Yay! Everybody is fired and now has to grovel to one of the slimiest billionaires in the state. Why does Horne love this so much?  If there's one positive thing we can say for the six year "newspaper war" it's that the number of reporting jobs in New Orleans declined at a less dramatic rate than they otherwise would have. Now that anomaly has met with an abrupt end. Horne goes on to predict that the Times-Georges monopoly is likely to cull the ranks further. How are we supposed to feel about that?  Horne seems confused.

The Advocate editors sure aren't.  They think it's great.  And they're looking forward to welcoming "some" new colleagues.

We look forward to welcoming some new colleagues, serving new subscribers, helping new advertisers grow their businesses — and tirelessly listening to all of the voices in the great communities we serve.

So congratulations to those guys.  Everybody else, have fun reapplying for some of your jobs.

It was puzzling yesterday to see a few commenters describe the late news wars as a "David vs. Goliath" contest. Lamar uses those terms in his title here, though he only does that in a pointed, sort of ironic way.  He also hints at something in this paragraph that a lot of people have either missed or purposefully ignored so far. 

The decision to fire the entire staff, in one fell swoop, has been roundly criticized on social media by the paper’s readers and among fellow members of the press, while the announcement of the purchase has been met with a range of reactions. Still, among journalists and mass media professionals, the consensus seems to be one of cautious optimism and a sense of relief. In recent years, the Times-Picayune has been faltering under poor corporate management.

Why would a sudden mass firing be met with "cautious optimism and a sense of relief" among media professionals?  The most likely reason is they all expected to be losing their jobs soon anyway. It's possible Advance was getting set to shutter the T-P whether Georges bought it or not. Still, the move hardly makes him any kind of savior. He's just stripping the carcass.

Anyway John Georges  vs. Advance/Newhouse isn't a  David and Goliath story. It's more like Goliath vs. Very Sick And Dying Goliath.  And regardless of which Goliath wins, the losers are journalists, support staff and readers. Or maybe it's all just the natural way of market economics.  We don't really need two newspapers in a town like New Orleans where so very little news happens, right? 

One thing we did learn was this dumb Darren Rovell tweet from back in January turned out to be more accurate than anyone knew.  And that's the strangest news to come out of any of this.

"Times-Advocate" Now THAT is some breaking news... https://t.co/zpFEJ2VpXl

— skooks (@skooks) January 24, 2019

Bensonville

The king is dead. Long live the queen. 

New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson is purchasing the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, adding another piece of marquee downtown real estate to the growing portfolio of Benson-controlled buildings in the area.

The deal, which is set to close Friday, puts the Hyatt in local hands for the first time in its 43-year history and follows a multimillion-dollar renovation of the hotel that began in 2010. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but comparable recent hotel sales suggest the purchase price could be around $300 million.

Benson is buying the hotel along with two partners, longtime local developer Darryl Berger, whose interests via the Berger Co. include the Windsor Court, Omni Royal and Omni Riverfront hotels, and New Jersey-based hotel asset management firm Fulcrum Hospitality.

"My late husband Tom believed in reinvesting in our community, and that philosophy has made our city a better place," Benson said in a statement announcing the transaction. "Our investment in the Hyatt will continue that legacy."

She's got a point.  What better way to honor Tom's legacy than to buy something that.. for a brief time after Katrina, at least... had a big sign at the top of its tower that said, "YAT" 



Okay so technically it said, "Yatt." Don't spoil it.

Meanwhile, this must mean it's time to update the old NOligarchs map of downtown New Orleans. Let's see, Bensonville just needs to add a little notch there to acquire the Hyatt.  There we go. All better.



Actually the map needs a bit more work than that. These territories are far more overlapping than we can hope to represent in this crude rendering.  It doesn't consider figures like Darryl Berger who, in addition to partnering with Gayle on the Hyatt also is in on Jaeger's proposed convention center hotel as well as numerous properties all over the landscape.   Jaeger, meanwhile, is an investor, along with Barry Kern, in the project to demolish the vacant Times-Picayune building and replace it with a golf arcade. This venture is the cornerstone of what we have labeled Kernworld.

All of which is to say this map isn't a true tool for examining the way the major developers have carved up the city's most valuable real estate so much as it is a piece of conceptual art.  It could be more than that but I think we need to apply for a grant first.  The least we can do for now is extend Torreszonia to reflect Sidney's recent Frenchmen Street acquisitions. The rest of it will have to live as an unfinished project for now.

Anyway congratulations to Gayle. So, hey, as a person with a major interest in the Superdome and now also with the hotel/motel taxes that fund its upkeep, does she just write the check directly to herself now?

On the ground reporting

The literal stupidity of our age of stupid literal-ism is literally stupid.

The company moved into the high-rise building amid much fanfare in December 2012 under the leadership of then-publisher Ricky Mathews, who had been chosen by Advance Media, owners of The Times-Picayune, to bring the paper into what was called the "digital transition." At the time, Mathews told The Wall Street Journal, "The owners wanted us to be in a space that could make a statement," and in a public meeting with New Orleans' tech community, he boasted the offices would have a "Google-Nike kind of vibe." (While NOLA.com employees enjoyed the prime view, some complained about the lack of mobility that came with the location, and cellphone service on the 32nd floor has been spotty at best since day one.)

"It's a beautiful space with the best views in the city," NMG president Tim Williamson told Gambit, "but I think that it was a little disconnected from the community. There's a better way to foster collaboration, and I really want to make a better opportunity to connect to the community. I think a media company should be connected at ground level."

Because the new space is on a lower floor, they are more "connected to the community."  Similarly, Donald Trump thinks "transparency" in border wall construction means you can actually see through it.  Besides, I thought this was the media company who knew about all the communications technology and stuff. Of all people, they should know how to contact the community from a distance.

Their new office space is 1/3 the size of the old one. They say they aren't firing anybody though who can say what good their word is now? For all we know, it's a promise to not literally set anyone on fire. Anyway, this isn't the most encouraging thing.

The size of the new newsroom has some NOLA.com employees concerned that another downsizing may be on the horizon in 2018 — as did a letter last month from Advance Local CEO Randy Siegel, which said, in part, "We will respond better and more nimbly to needs in the markets. We’ll look for more and different ways to generate revenue, as well as operational efficiencies."

Kern World Amusement District

So now we know that, in addition to the bouncy house, they also want to put in a golf ride of some sort. 

NEW ORLEANS – A few months after a group of local investors bought the former Times-Picayune building, neighbors are learning what is planned for the site.

According to a letter mailed to nearby businesses and residences, Dallas-based Topgolf has plans to build its latest location on the property at 3800 Howard Ave., along Interstate 10.

Topgolf if a driving range that caters to families.

But instead of just sending balls soaring, Topgolf is a game in which players aim for 11 giant dartboard-like targets on a 215-yard-long field. Microchipped balls provide instant feedback to players who tee off from climate-controlled hitting bays.

A restaurant and bar would be included on the site, according to the letter sent to neighbors.

Where your newspaper once lived, let's build an adult Chuck-E-Cheese. Sure, why not? At this point, that makes more sense than anything.  At least we're getting a clearer idea of what the vision for Kern World was.

It really will be Kern World

"Major amusements" are expected to emanate from the Times-Picayune building.  And, no, we don't mean Jeff Duncan's column.

The former Times-Picayune building on Howard Avenue is under consideration for redevelopment as a “major amusement facility,” and its new owners received the first step of approval Tuesday from New Orleans city officials toward the rezoning that would allow such a project.


The group that bought the 9-acre site — comprised of some of the top developers in New Orleans — has requested “mixed use” zoning instead of the current “business industrial park” designation, though they revealed few details about what they plan for the location. The city planning staff initially objected to the zoning change — on the grounds that the street network couldn’t bear the traffic a mixed-use development would bring, that the uses allowed wouldn’t fit with the surroundings, and because it would encroach on a dwindling amount of industrial land near the city center — prompting a new round of meetings between developers and city officials.

That communication did not sway the city planning staff, but it did lead to the disclosure that the intended redevelopment of the site is for a “major indoor and outdoor amusement facility” — not a residential development, according to a Jan. 23 letter from the developers.

“It’s no secret. There’s a specific tenant we are working with,” said attorney Mike Sherman in Tuesday’s hearing before the City Planning Commission. “We hope it works out. We don’t know.”

If "it's no secret," then why don't they tell us who the "specific tenant" is?  Is it just that Kern is moving the planned "indoor trampoline facility" up the block a little bit? If so, that hardly qualifies as  a "major amusement." What else could this be?

Kern World news

Lots of Noligarchs in the news today.  There's some from the con-profit sector which we'll get to later. This one is from the speculative land use sector, though.  The dream of Kernworld (a dependency of Jaegerton) grew one step closer to reality today at the CPC meeting.

The new owners of the former Times-Picayune building got City Planning Commission approval Tuesday (Feb. 7) for a zoning change that opens the nine-acre industrial site to entertainment, residential and other mixed-use developments.

The building at 3800 Howard Ave. in a mostly industrial area along Interstate 10 has been vacant for about one year. An ownership group that includes local developers Joe Jaeger, Arnold Kirschman, Barry Kern and Michael White wants to revive the property beyond its newspaper industry legacy, although specific plans for the property haven't been submitted to the city.

Peter Aamodt, representing Jaeger's company MCC Real Estate, said the property is one of the last swaths of underutilized land in the heart of the city, in an area with the potential to become a lively, mixed-use corridor. "A lot of people do see it as the next potential Warehouse District," Aamodt said after the vote.

If "a lot of people" turn out to be right about that, this would mean Jaeger has a substantial interest in both the old Warehouse District and the new one... as you can see on the map above.  Anyway it's nice to be able to make these kinds of investments in the full knowledge that friends and admirers on the CPC and City Council will be helpful when you need them.  Privilege has its privileges.

Also... 

Aamodt said after purchasing the property, the owners got dozens of calls for interest in the property, none of which involved industrial uses.

A residential use isn't currently being considered, he said. The new zoning would allow for about 486 residential units, he said, which would be about half the number of people the Times-Picayune once employed at the site.

Zing!

Also too. Odds have to be good that it will, in fact, be residential. 

Welcome to Kern World

Last week, Cousin Pat wrapped up a series of informative posts diving deep into the murky waters of zoning and land use. (Part 1 Part 2 Part 3)  If you're interested in knowing why this stuff is so important, here's what he has to say about that.

Now, if you ask me about this process, I would tell you there’s a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. My biggest problem isn’t in a “corrupt” system, it is in an obscure system where citizens and voters and taxpayers never really know what is going on in their community until it is too late to say anything about it. I personally find that incredibly undemocratic, and I believe processes like that tear at the fabric of strong communities. While that sort of thing is all technically above board, it breaks the public trust through omission and obfuscation, and citizens throw up their hands and take a fatalistic, disengaged attitude toward their own city government. Sound like any place you know?

I only differ with him here in that I'm fine with calling something "corrupt" if this is what it looks like. Deliberately obscure systems that steer policy choices toward the benefit of an exclusive circle of insiders meets that threshold for me. In any case, the only remedy is finding ways to facilitate greater transparency and participation.  That isn't easy, of course.  Mostly what happens is developers and oligarchs get whatever favors they ask for.

We're just now finding out what Barry Kern and Joe Jaeger are asking for with regard to their recent investments.  Imagine, for example, the Times-Picayune building as the new American Can Company.  It's beginning to look like Kern might.

The group of local investors who bought the former Times-Picayune building last year are requesting mixed-use zoning from the New Orleans City Council — suggesting yet another major redevelopment in the works along the Pontchartrain Expressway.

The 9-acre property at 3800 Howard Avenue housed The Times-Picayune from the late 1960s until printing moved out of state in 2016. It was sold in September to a development group called 3800 Howard Investors LLC, which included developer Joe Jaeger, Barry Kern of Mardi Gras World, and Arnold Kirschman who recently redeveloped the 4500 block of Freret Street, according to a report in the New Orleans Advocate at the time.

The group does not specify its intentions for the property in its application, but says that mixed-use zoning will help pave the way for the future project.

“This site is currently zoned BIP Business Industrial Park District, though it is unlikely that offices or a business will be the new use here,” according to a letter submitted with the application. “The owner has therefore proposed changing the property’s zoning to MU-2 High Intensity Mixed-Use District, which would allow for the site’s full redevelopment.”

According to Uptown Messenger, the CPC staff is recommending against this change saying, among other things, that the requested designation is  “too intense for this physically isolated site, given the limited surrounding infrastructure, and the fact that the site is not easily accessible for vehicles or pedestrians.” That seems reasonable enough.  But when Kern's group bought the building, they clearly understood that those circumstances could change.

Jaeger's group also includes float builder Barry Kern, president of Mardi Gras World, developer Arnold Kirschman, whose family operated furniture stores in the metro area for nearly a century, and Michael White, a businessman.

"They have no specific plans or projected uses," Aamodt said. "They just want to participate in the growing New Orleans economy, and feel like the neighborhoods surrounding that location continue to get better."

They're so high on the location, in fact, that they've also purchased a warehouse not too very far from there. (Although getting from one building to the other is a bit convoluted because... well... CPC is correct about the area, basically.)  Anyway, they want to make that into an "indoor trampoline facility" which is apparently a thing you can have.

Kern is planning “an indoor trampoline facility” inside a 51,000-square-foot warehouse at 3035 Earhart Boulevard, just off South Claiborne Avenue, according to the application he filed with the city.

“This facility would be the first of its kind in the city of New Orleans, and would represent a great addition to the family friendly entertainment options the city has to offer,” Kern wrote. “This request would not greatly alter the fabric of the zoning district, but, if granted, it would expand the options for families looking for a safe, supervised place for their children to play.”

Anyway, Kern's group obviously has plans for the area. And Kern and Jaeger being who they are probably means that whatever plans they have are probably going to be permitted with or without CPC's approval. Because that is how this works in case you haven't been paying attention.

This also means we get to add KernWorld to our ever-expanding NOLigarchs map.  It isn't fully developed yet. And it's also probably a lesser dependency of Jaegerton for now. But, well, we know where it is, rougly.

Barry Kern's Bouncy House

What an unusual location for such a thing.  Also, is this even a thing people will want badly enough to seek it out in that location? 

A new indoor amusement center centered on trampolines planned by Barry Kern for a warehouse on Earhart Boulevard near the Superdome will be able to move forward after the City Council cleared the way for it last week.


Kern is planning “an indoor trampoline facility” inside a 51,000-square-foot warehouse at 3035 Earhart Boulevard, just off South Claiborne Avenue, according to the application he filed with the city.

“This facility would be the first of its kind in the city of New Orleans, and would represent a great addition to the family friendly entertainment options the city has to offer,” Kern wrote. “This request would not greatly alter the fabric of the zoning district, but, if granted, it would expand the options for families looking for a safe, supervised place for their children to play.”

Should note, also, that Kern was part of a group who recently bought the old Times-Picayune building which isn't too far from there. The group didn't have any plans for that building at the time but here is what they said. 

Jaeger's group, 3800 Howard Investors LLC, closed on the $3.5 million deal Sept. 2, according to Orleans Parish Civil District Court records, which list the site at 8.9 acres.

Peter Aamodt, senior development manager of Jaeger's firm, MCC Real Estate, said Tuesday that the group has "no immediate plans" for the property.

"It was a good investment at the right time and the right place," he said.

Jaeger's group also includes float builder Barry Kern, president of Mardi Gras World, developer Arnold Kirschman, whose family operated furniture stores in the metro area for nearly a century, and Michael White, a businessman.

"They have no specific plans or projected uses," Aamodt said. "They just want to participate in the growing New Orleans economy, and feel like the neighborhoods surrounding that location continue to get better."

See, they were just gobbling up properties to sit on while they wait for the neighborhood to... um... bounce back. 

Thanks for saying it

Ricky Matthews and Jim Amoss must not have been invited to any Gumbo PAC parties. 

Our state needs a committed, resolute chief executive with a desire to govern and a plan to lead on many fronts.

David Vitter is that leader.

Ha ha good one.  Oh wait.. they're serious.  Okay why, though? 

His understanding of how Washington works and his connections there should help the state maximize federal resources for its $50 billion coastal master plan.

There is arguably no more important issue for South Louisiana than shoring up the coast. Lives depend on it, and Sen. Vitter knows that.

Well certainly that makes a lot of sense.  Who better than "Big Oil's boy" to get right to work on fixing the coast big oil destroyed?  It's really ingenious in a counter-intuitive sort of way if you think about it. (Don't think too hard about it, though.)  Anyway, tell us more about "how Washington works." 

We are convinced that Sen. Vitter, having witnessed the paralysis of government in Washington, will understand the need to build consensus while not giving in to the forces that keep us mired in mediocrity.

This is the biggest laugh line in the whole editorial.  Never mind the part about having witnessed a trainwreck, Vitter now knows how a train works. Vitter didn't just "witness the paralysis of government in Washington," David Vitter was the paralysis in Washington.  Look. Everybody hates Vitty, including the Republicans there. 

Many Republicans also hate Vitter in Louisiana, by the way.  The polling has shown this all along. This is why he has two strong GOP opponents in the primary and  big PACs organized on the specific purpose of electing anybody but him.  But, OK, he knows how to "build consensus" says the TP. We'll take that under advisement.

This election has been a particularly disappointing showing for the local press. The reporting has been mostly good as usual, but the editorial side of things has ranged from incompetent to insulting. I'll say more about this later in the week.

But let's give the T-P credit at least for one thing.  At least they make endorsements.  The Advocate, by contrast, makes recommendations about ballot measures like constitutional amendments or local tax propositions but it does not endorse candidates. This is a fundamental failure on their part to provide the transparency their readers deserve. Every news organization has a point of view.  They're all owned by some person or corporation. They all make hires and set standards in accordance with the views of the organization.  It's okay for them to tell us what those views are. Rather than diminishing the overall quality of the publication, it helps the reader understand how to interpret what they're reading.

The T-P still does some good reporting. It employs some talented writers.. even if it now employs fewer of them and treats them poorly.  All the Vitter endorsement does is confirm that their management is comprised of the shitty people we thought it was.  But the pretentious lie that the Advocate provides a "view from nowhere" is actually worse than that.  Are they better or worse than the T-P? Who knows? They aren't telling us. What are they hiding?

The T-P is run by terrible terrible people. But at least they aren't afraid to say so. The Advocate really should start being more honest with their readers. Otherwise we're going to go on assuming the worst.

The beatings will continue until The Future Of Journalism Arrives

And, of course, by beatings we mean people getting fired. 

Managers at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune carried off an expected round of layoffs this (Thursday) morning, firing some of the paper's longest-serving reporters alongside more recent hires. In a statement released after the firings, NOLA Media Group President Ricky Mathews said the firings included "28 full time and nine part time content staffers," or "21 percent of the overall content operation's full-time employees."

James Varney, whose career spanned nearly 26 years at The Times-Picayune, was among those fired, as was Paul Purpura, who began at the paper in 1999 and worked a variety of beats in his 16-year tenure. John Pope, whose career began at the old States-Item in 1972, no longer will be a staff writer, but will continue to contribute to the paper.

Andy Grimm, who was hired away from the Chicago Tribune to cover federal courts, also was let go, as were reporter Ben Myers and graphics reporter/editor Dan Swenson. Benjamin Alexander Bloch, who covered coastal parishes and the Gulf of Mexico, was fired, as was Dinah Rogers, the paper's assistant photo editor and a 24-year employee.

Music writer Alison Fensterstock, a former Gambit music columnist, was let go, as well as Cate Root, who posted about events around town and covered the city's burgeoning comedy scene. David Lee Simmons, a former Gambit staffer who covered the entertainment scene, also was fired.

Lyons Yellin of Gambit's TV partner WWL-TV reported that "almost all" the prep sports staff was let go.

It's a real shame nothing ever happens in New Orleans that people might want to read about. But "the market" probably knows what it's doing, right?

Here's what it's doing. Sorry to lift most of Athenae's post here but.. look.

Let’s review: They knifed a bunch of dedicated people in the back, made home delivery incomprehensible and inaccessible, switched up their printing schedule three times in a year, and then blamed their customers for not throwing money at them. That has tits-all to do with the business culture or incremental changes, and everything to do with you guys being morons who could screw up a popsicle stand on the hottest day in July.

It’s certainly not news that America’s newspapers have been battered by the Internet and the recession. Over the past decade, the nation’s 1,300 daily newspapers have lost about 25 percent of their revenue and an equal percentage of their daily subscribers, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Which still does not tell me if that leaves them with enough revenue to do their jobs. “Less” is not “insufficient” and it’s incredibly lazy to use the two terms interchangeably. The conventional wisdom is not the same as fact.

Farhi goes on to note that cutting print has meant cutting the thing that makes the money, but somehow that didn’t factor into his assessment of the Advance strategy (if you can call “let’s hope nobody notices we’re just greedy bastards because the Internet is here for us to blame” a strategy):

Asked whether the “digital-first” strategy is succeeding, the normally voluble Mathews pauses. “I don’t think you can say that,” he replies. “There’s not a finish line that any of us see in the near future.”

But hey, at least it’s BOLD!

The "finish line" is we keep firing people until it justifies our decision to transition from profitable journalism to.. what we're sure will be.. more profitable online advertising.  We're sure that will work as soon as we complete the consolidation of all our local reporting by veteran journalists with specific beats into one streamlined "content staff" serving clickbait to the greater Alabama region.

Robust redux

So this photo revisit is a little different.  The original subject is a photo I didn't get around to taking until 2012.  But it's of something I'd had for a long time already.



"Katrina Puts End to Lull," it says. That's the Saturday paper. The more famous headline is the following day's "Katrina Takes Aim." But I evacuated Sunday morning and lost that day's paper. You can find pictures of it all over the internet, of course. Here's one I just googled.   "Puts end to lull" is a more intriguing headline, though.  I think it better captures the upheaval that was on the way. We were all about to be profoundly shaken out of our lull.  We may only now have begun to recapture it.

But this isn't really a post about that.  This is supposed to be one of those posts where we go back to the scene of an interesting photo from immediate post-K times and look at how it's changed. Here's how we're going to do that.

A few years after Katrina, you might remember there was an event we here at the Yellow Blog called "Crazy Freak Out '08" on account of what we were certain was a traumatized overreaction to the approach of Hurricane Gustav.  The Crazy Freak Out ended up being more valid than we anticipated as Gustav did end up setting off an evacuation.  The storm didn't destroy the city all over again but it did cause extended power outages all over town as well as angst over a bizarre "tiered" reentry plan.

As it became clear that Gustav would probably be a thing, I got out and took some pictures of the preparations.  One thing I made sure to get a shot of was the T-P front page.



I did the same thing a few years later when we went through the drill again with Isaac.



But something else was happening at that time to the Times-Picayune itself. Its parent company Advance Publications was implementing a nationwide "digital first" strategy which, despite the typical corporate buzzwording about being adaptable but "robust," was really all about firing lots of people.

Former T-P staff writer Rebecca Theim wrote a book about it. She recaps some of the story in this article.

In May 2012, New Orleanians and employees of The Times-Picayune learned via The New York Times that a small circle of Picayune senior editors and managers were plotting a dramatic new course for the newspaper. Advance would put the publication at the center of a bold experiment in U.S. journalism: New Orleans would become the largest American city without a daily newspaper. The daily Times-Picayune would be replaced with a three-day-a-week publication and an expanded NOLA.com, the newspaper’s website that was routinely criticized as mediocre. The changes would involve deep staff cuts at an organization that had never instituted an involuntary layoff. Additional savings would result from reduced printing and delivery costs.

Almost immediately, the community went berserk. A grassroots campaign included dedicated Facebook pages and Twitter accounts with thousands of followers, an online petition that eventually garnered close to 10,000 signatures, 1,500 yard signs supporting a daily newspaper, and public protests. A New Orleans philanthropist recruited a who’s who of city business and civic leaders to lobby against the changes, while the owner of the city’s NFL and NBA franchises publicly pursued acquiring the newspaper.

The specter of Katrina fueled the campaign. As Miller, Roberts, and LaPoe noted in Oil and Water, “… the protest underscored the significance and essence of local news, a relationship solidified by Katrina.”

Despite a valiant community effort, more than 200 employees, including one-half of the newsroom, got their pink slips. Mounting anxiety and uncertainty over future employment then prompted a rash of defections to other media outlets locally and across the country that continued well into the next year. In response, The Times-Picayune rescinded the terminations of at least 10 employees, but “digital first” and its reduced publication schedule went into effect October 1, 2012.

Since then, Advance has continued its strategy of firing its way to success.  Recently we learned that Times-Picayune staff are preparing for yet another round of cuts this fall.

This week I went back to the corner where I'd taken those photos of the T-P paper box before Gustav and Isaac.  Katrina was back in the news, of course.  But something else was different.



I should mention also that Rebecca Theim will be at Rising Tide X next Saturday talking about the changing face of local media.

Rising Tide X is August 29, 2015 at Xavier University. Check out the rest of the website for details about the extensive program. You can go for free this year but please register here. If you'd like to help defray the cost of production or order swag, there's a separate GoFundMe page here.   

T-P to New Orleans employees: Drop Dead

Put away your never-ending arguments about print vs digital.  This is strictly about the T-P killing jobs in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS – The Times-Picayune will move its printing and packaging operations to Mobile in the next 12 to 15 months, resulting in the loss of about 100 jobs, according to a story on the paper's web site, NOLA.com.

100 new "entrepreneurs" that we can celebrate on NOLA.com.

Just think of how many floodwalls we could stuff with these

This is a recent article in The Atlantic by a local printmaker who came to own a collection of some 30,000 editions of New Orleans newspapers dating back to the 19th Century.

There were papers from the The Daily-Picayune dating back to 1888, some from the The Times-Democrat, and many more from the first decade and a half of The Times-Picayune,  which was created by the merger of the Daily-Picayune and the Times-Democrat in 1914. Reading a book on the history of the Picayune, I learned of Eliza Jane Nicholson, the first female proprietor of a major American newspaper. Much of the collection, it turned out, contains her innovative publishing legacy. So I named the archive after her: The Eliza Jane Nicholson Digital Newspaper Archive.

There's much more to this.  Check out the archive's website here. It had been in the news previously, but I'm sorry to say this is the first time I've read about it. It's a fascinating project.

I’ve recruited archivists, artists, curators, graphic designers, grant writers, media history experts, and am building a team of volunteers. We're designing prototypes that re-imagine this material for the modern market. Preserving an archive like is not enough. Today's technologies and analytical tools will allow us to revisit these newspapers and extract more meaning from them than was ever possible when they were first printed. 

It reminded me that I've got a little digital newspaper archive of my own going. It's come about kind of by accident but it's there nonetheless.  Over the better part of a decade I've been taking shapshots of newspapers from time to time.  My collection marks significant events such as:

Hurricanes approaching.. or "eyeing Louisiana" .. or ending a lull.







Prayers being answered



The Gambit getting smaller



Papers going to war



Certain special events being advertised



BTW: Rising Tide 9 is coming September 13.  This one looks to have a surprising amount of heavy substance. It's a great time with some OK people and terrific deal.  Sign up here.

"7th Ward Roosters" running wild



"Jeff" doing various things







There's more.  Not sure these are.. you know.. printmaker quality or anything but at least they are free to access.

Maybe just go back to printing every day

Daigle's grocery.  Image via


Here's the T-P's new revised for football season print editions schedule.

For a cutting edge digital first publishing outlet they sure do print a lot of newspapers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.  But if you really are going to buck a trend it would be refreshing to not simultaneously exalt in the trend you are clearly bucking.

Blake flaked

The "Blake Pontchartrain" column might be Gambit's most popular running feature. It's a weekly docent for a city that loves nothing better than reading about its own trivia.  The column can't be the easiest thing in the world to write. I'm sure the inbox is always full and the more interesting questions can require some extensive research.

But then presenting the results of that research shouldn't be too difficult. All you really have to do is point readers to where they can find more information.  Ideally this means citing sources which, as it turns out, may not have always happened. 

Over the weekend, a Gambit reader noticed that some recent Blake Pontchartrain columns contained passages that hewed closely to materials that were published elsewhere. In some cases, passages in the Blake columns were identical, or nearly identical, to the work of others.

So far the only specific examples of the plagiarism that have been made public are the ones noted in this Romenesko post.   It's worth pointing out that one is a case of some facts about Fort Pike copy/pasted from a state tourism website while the other is the definition of a word. So it's perhaps not the most scandalous lifting of original work the world has ever seen. But then this just raises the question, couldn't they insert a single "according to so and so" line in there somewhere and easily solve everyone's problem?

The other interesting fact about this is the "discoverer" of this scandal happens to be a Times-Picayune reporter. So it's worth remembering that as the cutbacks at the T-P have become the major media story of 2012-13, Gambit has provided the most thorough coverage of those events.

Not that any of that excuses plagiarism.  As an interested reader, I'd like to go back through the "Blake" archives and determine for myself if there's anything more egregious than the two examples of laziness highlighted in the Romenesko piece but Gambit has flushed them down a memory hole, at least for the time being. 

In any case, I hope this doesn't lead to the permanent discontinuation of the column. I know I'm not alone in saying it's one of my most anticipated weekly reads.

Quote of the Day

You know if I were to go back through the near decade's worth of "Quote of the Day" posts on this blog and sort the quotes according to their originators, I have a strong suspicion the greatest number of those will have come from James Gill.

James Gill, whose acerbic wit and incisive columns about Louisiana politics and peccadillos have appeared in The Times-Picayune since 1986, is the latest T-P name to jump ship to The Advocate.

"It's very hard to make out a quote, because quotes are all bullshit," Gill told Gambit tonight. "But I am delighted to go to the highest bidder, I am happy to be renewing my association with [former Times-Picayune managing editor, now Advocate editor] Peter Kovacs — and I am delighted we have a newspaper war again after so many years."

Did somebody say T-P the streets?

Okay, no, not quite like that, anyway.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune will launch an additional print publication that will appear three times a week on newsstands beginning this summer. TPStreet, focusing on breaking news, sports and entertainment, will appear in a tab-size format, publishing on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The new publication will cost 75 cents.

You have to hand it to Ricky Mathews et al for showing some robust balls here. "Here's yer goddamned print edition, suckers!" they seem to say as they open their browsers to NOLA.com and mash down on the Control and P keys.  No, they won't deliver copies of TPStreets to home subscribers.  That's just how much they think of it.. or of you.  Shouldn't you be greeting them at the gate as liberators, anyway?

Besides just having the thing show up on your doorstep takes away the fun of the hunt.

Did you find TPStreets on your corner this morning? Send a pic in to NOLA.com today! You should be able to distinguish the fun-size paper from  The Advocate which is (still) (sort of) an actual newspaper. Though, you might end up mistaking it for The New Orleans Street Exchange which is not.. although it is an actual street paper which TPStreet is not.  Got it? No? OK well maybe look for the one with the free 8 pack of Crayolas or the package of Famous Amos attached. That's probably it.

If you're lucky you'll pick up one of five TPStreetses each month that contain coveted Golden Tickets. The Tickets are good for a ride on the Great Glass Elevator at Canal Place. It will take you up to the NOLA Media Group offices where the tour will show you the machine that shrinks newspapers by breaking them into a million little pieces and beaming them onto small screens.

Like this but with a more obnoxious child making the decisions.

The Daily Georges

John Georges rumored to be in talks to buy the Advocate.

If true, this is probably bad news.  We've already seen the way the T-P has shifted its focus toward more and more brainless boosterism in recent months.  I'd imagine this to mean we no longer have hope of a decent alternative.

Update: For giggles, recall Georges' thoughts on digital media.



For extra giggles, here is the background context to that remark.

John Georges goes rabid at OPDEC endoresement forum from Eli Ackerman on Vimeo.

You'll be important to the important people when you die

NOLA Media Group's Ricky Mathews compiles a "community roundtable" of advisers "to point us to compelling stories and inspire us to write editorials."  Of course the Knights of the NOLA.com Roundtable are all establishment insiders. 

We believe these sessions will be invaluable to our work. We expect to gain insights we otherwise might not have. We expect to be prodded and, sometimes, chided. We expect input from Roundtable members to point us to compelling stories and inspire us to write editorials. And we expect our readers to benefit from the collective wisdom of this group.

At long last representatives of Entergy, Audubon, Touro, Tulane, Charter schools, and the Chambers of Commerce for Jefferson and Orleans Parish will have a real voice around here. We look forward to benefiting from their wisdom.

On the one hand we could say that at least they're being transparent.  It's always been a matter of course that the T-P's natural disposition is to serve as an establishment mouthpiece.  But there are degrees of brown nosing and, from the looks of things, NOLA Media's Ricky Mathews is a Class A talent there.  Back in May, as news of the changes at the TP  was still breaking, Gambit's Kevin Allman wrote,

Across town, Mayor Mitch Landrieu released a general statement of support for the paper, noting he had been a T-P paper boy in his youth and saying, "I look forward to talking with new management and others who have a stake in the future of The Times-Picayune to discuss how we can help the newspaper grow and not diminish."

That probably sounds like music to the ears of Mathews, who is said to be a guy who courts those in power — a stark contrast to Phelps, who avoided public relationships that might become conflicts for his newspaper. In Alabama, Mathews was the head of the Coastal Recovery Commission (CRC), created in 2010 after the BP oil disaster. The commission, a project of then-Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, was funded entirely with BP funds. Mathews used AL.com to promote both the CRC and its subsequent nonprofit arm, the Coastal Alabama Leadership Council, in chatty stories under his own byline. Some Picayune employees worry that Mathews will not hesitate to become involved in Louisiana politics in ways that Phelps shunned, at least publicly.

I get that there's some value to cultivating access to influential sources, but Matthews strikes me as someone who very badly wants to be in the club, so to speak, and will do anything to please the gatekeepers of club membership. Maybe he should by them each their own Loving Cup coffee mugs to use when they sit together at the Roundtable.

Update: I guess not everybody knows the song in the title here. Hard to find a good version on YouTube. This will have to do.

The Word Business

I agree with Dambala.  The Advocate is going to have to come harder than this if they want to compete. 

Meanwhile, the new NOLA.com reveals that it has dumped Stephanie Grace's middle-of-the-road but at least informed and relevant politics column for James Varney's act which so far appears to be a conservative talk radio style series of trolling gimmicks.  In his first column, Varney visits area libraries and concludes their periodical sections are insufficiently conservative. Hilariously, Varney provides as examples of the "leftist" reading materials on display The New York Times and .... wait for it... Newsweek.

Later we get this jewel of a, "I'm not saying X but actually I'm saying X" line.

What explains this? I don't think the librarians are some conspiratorial set looking to blacklist a viewpoint. At least, I sure hope that's so.

It's disingenuous of NOLA.com to sell this obvious baiting bullcrap on its opinion page.  I don't object to a conservative columnist.  Ideological alignment is irrelevant so long as the writer presents a genuine and thoughtful attempt at grappling with a relevant news item. For example, I enjoy Owen Courreges' column over at Uptown Messenger even though I frequently disagree with it. 

What NOLA.com has done, though, is shoehorn Varney into position specifically so that they can have  a "Conservative Columnist" to falsely "balance" out their opinion page. Tonight they're promising to follow up the Presidential debate with a staged argument between Varney and their ostensibly "liberal" columnist Jarvis DeBerry.  I think Deberry is a fine writer, although I don't think it's accurate or helpful to label his output as categorically "liberal."  But, then, he obviously agreed to play in this sandbox as well so maybe he's more comfortable with the reductive generalization than I would have assumed.

I guess, in the meantime, it's up to us to blacklist this nonsense until someone presents us with something better.