New Orleans loses its last daily newspaper.
It is the first of the major American cities to no longer have a daily print newspaper. At 175 years old, the Times-Picayune announces it will circulate only three times a week. But the future of journalism remains bright: on the internet, with more plurality and dynamism.
Mines 247 Another episode in the defeat of print newspapers. New Orleans, the charming city of American jazz, has become the largest city (350 inhabitants) in the United States without a daily newspaper. The Times-Picayune, at the ripe old age of 175, announced that it will only circulate three times a week.
Journalist Paulo Nogueira addressed the issue on his blog with yet another unavoidable piece, suggestively titled "Not even God can save newspapers anymore." In closing, Nogueira, contrary to what some might imagine, shows that there's no room for lamenting. "If I had to say a single word to young journalists, it would be: 'Internet.'"
Read the blog post below. Diary of the Center of the World:
Media frenzy in the United States. New Orleans, with 350,000 inhabitants, has become the largest city in the United States without a daily newspaper.
The Times-Picayune, at 175 years old, has given up. It will only circulate three times a week in print. This seems to be one of the possibilities for daily newspapers to survive – at least partially – in the Digital Age: reducing the number of print editions.
Picayune – the name derives from an old Spanish coin, which was the price of a copy of the newspaper when it was launched, back when the region belonged to Spain – made history by providing epic coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In an unforgettable headline from that time, Picayune urged: “Help us, please!” (It's a strangely relevant phrase when you think about Picayune itself.)
I was thinking about the newspaper a little while ago, while watching a performance by the Stomp group at the Ambassador Theatre. The members of Stomp extract interesting sounds from brooms, rubber handles, plastic bags – and newspapers.
In one of the best episodes, the Stomp crew starts reading and, little by little, the newspapers are transformed from objects of reading into percussion instruments. Phenomenal, as Caco, the man who saves us all at the helm of Planeta Sustentável, says.
Is this the final fate of newspapers, to serve as numbers for Stomp? It's good that the group is accumulating newspapers for future presentations, I reflect. Printed newspapers are today, to draw a parallel, like horse-drawn carriages when cars were just beginning to take over the streets.
I have a certain nostalgia. The Nogueira family is made of paper: my father worked for 33 years at Folha and I worked for 25 at Abril.
Plus.
But I'm happy to see my son Pedro, also a journalist, working in the right field for his generation: digital journalism. (Not just working in it: he's an entrepreneur. Pedro created a men's website, El Hombre, which I imagine will support the Nogueira family in the future.) If I had to say a single word to young journalists, it would be: "Internet."