Changes at The Times-Picayune lay bare the roots of a national trend:
The
recent changes
at the Times-Picayune to stop publishing a daily paper and instead publish three
days a week are unfortunate for the residents of the city and surrounding
areas. However, it was only a matter of
time before this or something similar happened given what’s been happening to
newspapers across the country for the past couple decades. Lots of people claim that this is a result of
the growing popularity of online news and the glut of information in general available
on the internet, or of not enough people subscribing to the paper and paying
for content. While this is partly true,
it’s important to see this change in its broader context. There are two other,
very important things to note that help explain what happened to the TP:
changes in policies relaxing media ownership regulations and the cost of
producing and distributing news. Once we
take these into consideration, we can better understand the role of consumption
patterns and the internet in the changing news industry and the likely
consequences of current policy decisions.
