Times-Picayune, 3 other papers under scythe

Newspapers aren't dying, they're just fading away. We got the news last week of four papers across the Deep South going into retreat. They are all owned by the same company.

Newhouse Newspapers deemed it necessary to make a dramatic reduction in all four places. That reduction is to publish three days a week. The daily status will be dead and buried. At least that's the plan now.

The expected outcry has been heard. Unless other interests step into the picture, Newhouse (a division of Advance Publications) will apparently carry out its plans.

The news reports focused strongly on New Orleans. Yes, the most significant paper of the four is the Times-Picayune of that city. But the papers in Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile (all in Alabama) will have the scythe applied to them too.

Again I emphasize that any initial plan (or ballyhooed announcement) is subject to change. I'm an old media person myself and I'm cautious. I remember when the CBS Evening News reported as fact that the Minnesota Timberwolves were moving to New Orleans. Connie Chung read that script.

The NBA decided to keep the Wolves here, although the league doesn't mind that cities get scared to death about relocation. So let the false reports flow, I guess.

Had our Minneapolis paper cut back, we might not have been harangued daily about how the Minnesota Vikings were hanging by a thread here. Brent Waddell and I called the Vikings stadium story "the undead" - a story that appeared with endless wrinkles prominently on the Star Tribune's pages, often page 1.

Brent and I were not losing sleep about whether the Vikes would have an opulent new palace built for their needs. The NFL is desperate to get such stadiums built because it's getting harder to draw fans to games. That's because the TV viewing experience has become superior.

The Star Tribune acted like a cheerleader. It did this by just prioritizing the story constantly.

"Oh, but the Vikings could leave." Do you have any idea how many people aren't losing sleep over this, fellas?

The decline of newspapers simply means we won't be so fixated on this voice-of-God media voice jumping off newsprint. The new fragmented media world is preferable. Find a media voice that suits your tastes. Gravitate to where you think the truth is bubbling up.

Don't trust the Internet? I don't trust everything I hear at morning coffee but I don't shy away from it. People are smart. They will learn what to trust.

I have reservations about the Star Tribune because I think they need all those big league teams. The irony is that the real sports aficionados are going online to get their enrichment anyway. They read Tom Pelissero for the Vikings, not Sid Hartman or his ink-stained colleagues.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune is going from a full seven days a week for its print version, to three. Ditto the Birmingham News, Huntsville Times and Mobile Press-Register. Oh, substantial staff cuts loom at all four. So, the very resources that might make these products attractive online are being jettisoned in large part.

New Orleans will be the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. without a daily. Will the sun still rise in the east? Assuredly it will.

It's an irony that many supporters of the Times-Picayune have gathered on Twitter!

The sentimentalists can indeed make noise. I have wanted to gag watching some of the sanctimonious analysis on cable TV news. It lacks objectivity and honesty.

Many of these talking heads are at mid-life or somewhat beyond and they express distress at what is happening. Many worked for a newspaper as their media career developed. They view that page on their resume as sort of a badge.

In an earlier time, "many were called but few were chosen" when it came to writing careers. Those who could park themselves at a typewriter could feel privileged. It was as if they were let past a velvet rope.

We deferred to newspaper reporters. The height of this was Watergate. But Watergate was an aberration. The reality is we don't like the voice of God media system. We like a democratized media.

Would these talking heads who bemoan newspapers' decline really like to go back to pre-Internet days? How many of us even take a moment to remember what that was like? We were more beholden to newspapers, I guess.

But what about when a newspaper had an agenda that might irritate us? The best we could do is submit a letter to the editor and hope it got published. Today there are throngs of us on new media platforms who can reach an appreciable audience with a credible message. No printing plant or barrels of ink.

The sentimentalists about the Times-Picayune must know where this is all headed. New realities have tightened the noose around the traditional newspaper. Advertisers have consolidated. Their choices have multiplied, much to their delight. Clients have more options for getting information.

And we bemoan this? Sentiment can exert a strong pull. But let's live in the real world please.

In terms of total revenue, the newspaper industry is half as big as it was in 2005. Newspaper revenue is scant for the Monday, Tuesday and Saturday editions.

What about money from people who "buy the paper?" Don't be naive, folks, it's advertising that buttresses this business.

Newhouse Newspapers is striving not to sound grim. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt please. They give us the new buzzword of "hybrid" - print and online as an effective combo. It's tenuous because print and online represent such different communications models.

A newspaper is a behemoth enterprise that develops a monolithic voice, as in "we need a new Vikings stadium."

Such a mantra gets taken apart online. The pretensions are pierced. Any special interests are readily identified for what they are. This is scary for people in power, people who historically have curried favor with folks "behind the velvet rope" at newspapers.

It's this old model we want to discourage.

We all love the media and communications. It's the voice of God element we need to ease into the past.

A newspaper assumes we all want to read about the same things. How cockeyed for the year 2012! Does anyone doubt this?

Newspapers are going the way of Shriners conventions. A nice online analysis of it all quoted Led Zeppelin: "If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com