That’s if you consider disaster exciting.
What’s wrong with newspapers today? The same thing that’s always been wrong with newspapers: the people running them.
We’ve become accustomed to bad news from the ever-narrowing world of print journalism these uneasy days. Not just bad journalism, but bad business decisions. It’s as if the suits at Corporate HQ — or more likely a committee of suits at Corporate HQ — had drawn up a business plan for all major American newspapers back in 1994 and proceeded to follow it. Right off a cliff.
As more newspapers go off that cliff, you’d think that more of them — a publisher or editor or somebody, anybody who’s in charge — would yell “WATCH OUT!” and stop on the edge. And decide, then and there, that they’re through watching the newspaper they love commit suicide.
Last week, another one bit the dust. Or could soon. This time the newspaper isn’t in Seattle or even Denver. It’s a lot closer. And it used to be a lot better. It’s the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. And the suits running its parent company have decided that the paper’s circulation has dropped to the point that it doesn’t pay to print a newspaper four days a week.