I spent most of my journalism career at The Times-Picayune and have many friends there, so the news that its owners are slashing the staff, dismissing top editors, and cutting back publication days is very difficult to process. My heart goes out to my valiant former colleagues, and to the city itself, which will suffer from having reduced news coverage and seeing one of its signature institutions diminished. During my time at the paper I was involved in many of its ambitious and award-winning journalism efforts. Clearly I was lucky to be there during that era, and that era is now definitively over. (Ironically or not, the TP just published a great series on the Louisiana prison system. But where will the next one come from?) 
 
 What now? The newspaper industry is in a profound, seemingly neverending crisis; this isn’t a “why couldn’t things remain the same forever?” post. They can’t. But a city like New Orleans, with its rebuilding challenges, its violence, its rich culture, the odd mix of civic virtue and corruption, and its long-term existential risks from hurricanes and rising seas, deserves a first-class newsgathering operation. One that gets the city, but also gets that news is changing. 
 
 Advance Publications, the owner of The Times-Picayune, portrays the changes as a bold and necessary step into the digital future: 
 
 NOLA Media Group will significantly increase its online news-gathering efforts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while offering enhanced printed newspapers on a schedule of three days a week. The newspaper will be home-delivered and sold in stores on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only. A second new company, Advance Central Services, will print and deliver the newspaper. Both of the new companies are owned by Advance Publications. The decision to form a new company signals a change in the way news is delivered to an increasingly wired New Orleans area audience, said Mathews. Jim Amoss, currently editor of The Times-Picayune, will run the combined content operation of NOLA Media Group. “The Times-Picayune, under Jim’s direction, is one of the finest newspapers in the country,” said Mathews, “and NOLA.com is the number one news site in Louisiana. Our best path to success lies in a digitally focused organization that combines the award-winning journalism of The Times-Picayune and the strength of NOLA.com.” 
 
 This sounds … sort of okay. But while there’s a lot on corporate reorganization, there’s nothing on how this will work in practice. “Combining the award-winning journalism of The Times-Picayune and the strength of NOLA.com” is basically what they’ve been doing, or trying to, for years now. And that signals a problem, because it hasn’t worked all that well. ||||| The Associated Press 
 
 Times-Picayune cuts half of newsroom staff 
 
 The Times-Picayune said Tuesday 200 employees will lose their jobs when one of the nation's oldest daily newspapers shifts its focus to online news and publishes just three days a week beginning this fall. 
 
 The paper said 84 of the newsroom's 173 employees were cut at the 175-year-old paper. Advertising, circulation and other departments also were affected. The change means New Orleans will become the largest metro area in the nation without a daily newspaper in the digital age. 
 
 In Alabama, three major daily newspapers laid off about 400 employees, many of them in the newsrooms at The Birmingham News, the Press-Register in Mobile and The Huntsville Times. 
 
 All four papers will continue to publish on their websites, and online access will remain free. 
 
 The newspapers' parent company, Advance Publications, is shifting its focus in the digital age. Papers have struggled in recent years as print advertising declined during the recession, and newspapers have yet to learn how to make online advertising as profitable as its printed counterpart. 
 
 News of the pending changes first broke late last month and was greeted with dismay In New Orleans. A rally in support of keeping The Times-Picayune a daily drew hundreds of people outside a popular restaurant last week. 
 
 Community leaders and a group of advertisers that includes an auto dealership, one of the area's largest real estate agencies, jewelers and a regional grocery chain have called on the parent company to keep the daily publication. 
 
 "Many readers can't imagine the morning without our newspaper in their hands," The Times-Picayune editor, Jim Amoss, said in a video posted on the paper's affiliated website, NOLA.com. "I understand that. I'm a print guy. I grew up in this business. But I'm also a news guy, a journalist and a New Orleans native. My priorities are to cover the news of the New Orleans area, to have the best reporters investigate and explain the complexities of this politically byzantine community and to write about our culture, our food, our music, our sports mania." 
 
 The staff reductions are effective Sept. 30. 
 
 Job casualties in New Orleans included some of the city's most experienced writers and photographers, many of whom announced their own departure on a Facebook page by simply posting "-30-," an old copy editor's code for "end of story." 
 
 Peter Finney, a sports writer for the paper since 1945, is being laid off but has been asked to write a freelance column, the paper said. Managing editors Peter Kovacs and Dan Shea, among the newsroom leaders during the paper's Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, have not been asked to stay. Brett Anderson, the current restaurant critic for the food-obsessed city, is leaving for a fellowship. 
 
 Employees who took part in Tuesday's meetings described an emotional scene that played out over the course of the day among colleagues who have worked together for many years. 
 
 Reporter Barri Marsh Bronston said she was being let go after 31 years. 
 
 "These last three weeks have been unbearable, but I'm feeling a sense of relief right now," she said in a post on Facebook. She did not want to be interviewed but gave permission for her comment to be used. 
 
 Throughout the day, employees met with various managers and were told either that they would have a job with the new company, Nola Media Group, or they were offered severance packages. Some will later be able to apply for positions in the new operation, the paper said. 
 
 The Times-Picayune was acquired by the Newhouse-family run Advance chain in the 1960s. The current news operation was rooted in the combination of The Times-Picayune, a morning newspaper, and its afternoon companion, The States-Item, in 1980. 
 
 After the merger, the newspaper expanded coverage with the opening of bureaus in the New Orleans suburbs. It earned two Pulitzer Prizes in the 1990s and then later two more for its reporting of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
– Sad news from one of America's great newspapers: The New Orleans Times-Picayune has announced that it will cease daily publication this fall. The paper, founded as the Picayune in 1837, will now offer print editions just three days a week, on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, while continuing to offer daily reporting online at Nola.com, reports the Washington Post. The move is expected to cost close to a third of the paper's 150 reporters their jobs, and will leave New Orleans as the biggest American city without a daily paper. Analysts say the move will leave the paper's future uncertain and—since the Times-Picayune was widely seen to have done an admirable job of moving its operations online—raises questions about the future of the entire newspaper industry. "A city like New Orleans, with its rebuilding challenges, its violence, its rich culture, the odd mix of civic virtue and corruption, and its long-term existential risks from hurricanes and rising seas, deserves a first-class news gathering operation," writes former Times-Picayune journalist John McQuaid at Forbes. "One that gets the city, but also gets that news is changing."