Failed aristocrats

Without looking it up, let's see if we can name the wealthiest individuals in Louisiana. There's  Gayle Benson, Joe Cannizaro, Phyllis Taylor, Eddie Rispone. Probably Lane Grigsby is in there somewhere. Who else? Jim Bernhard? I can't think of a name right now. I'm sure it will come to me... 

The economic impacts of coronavirus have hit Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper. In a company wide email, The Advocate Publisher and President Judi Terzotis announced that all salaried employees and full-time hourly staff would be reduced to working four days a week, resulting in a twenty percent pay cut. The email also announced that “a number of our staffers will be temporarily furloughed.”

“Our world has turned upside down,” the email said. “It is a shame that a terrible economy requires these moves at the same time our importance to the community has risen. More people are reading our journalism, online and in print, than ever before.”

Seems like at this particular moment when the world is on fire and we are ruled by corrupt sociopaths and our city is a major epicenter of the crisis, you wouldn't want to go laying off reporters and cutting back on news production.  Unless, I guess, if you are one of the sociopaths.

I mean it certainly seems like people want to read about that stuff.  According to Kovacs and Terzotis, they do, anyway. 

Louisianians need accurate and unbiased coverage more than ever, and they are turning to us as never before. Online traffic on nola.com and theadvocate.com is running three to four times above normal.

The pace of new digital subscriptions has more than doubled in March, even though we are making our coronavirus coverage available free of charge as a public service.

Of course we know the news business isn't about selling the news to readers.  It's about selling the readers to advertisers.  And selling the readers to advertisers isn't as profitable as it used to be.  It's especially bad during this moment. But the current moment is extraordinary and, depending on what happens in Washington, it remains to be seen how bad and how lasting its effects will be. In the meantime, maybe the patrician overseer of the operation could throw in a little extra to help weather the storm. But that's not how any of this works.

We shouldn't be at the mercy of patricians like Georges.  Not in times like these or any other.