In New Orleans, a journalistic experiment with unclear results - The Washington Post

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"1766","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignleft","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"360","height":"256","alt":""}}]]Hurricane Katrina dealt a staggering blow to New Orleans 10 years ago this week. A far lesser, but still lingering, punch came in late 2012 when Advance Publications, the owner of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, launched a bold strategy to arrest the paper’s financial free fall. With the swiftness of a cloudburst, Advance laid off 200 employees, including about 15 percent of the news staff, and reduced publication of the daily paper to Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Henceforth, Advance declared, the Picayune would emphasize its Web site, NOLA.com.All at once, New Orleans, a city that celebrates tradition and quirkiness in about equal measure, became the largest in the United States without a daily newspaper. It also became an inadvertent test market for the future of journalism, at least the kind that newspapers have provided readers for centuries. Advance’s strategy has drawn the attention of publishers around the world, all of whom have the same question: Is this the way to ensure that newspapers survive in the digital age?The answer still isn’t clear. Source: In New Orleans, a journalistic experiment with unclear results - The Washington Post