The Newhouse Corp greedheads are wielding the axe today at the Picayune, which is located at 3800 Howard Avenue. 202 employees are being “laid off” (fired or sacked to you and me) today, which is 49% of the Picayune’s newsroom staff. It appears that some folks, including venerable sports columnist Pete Finney found out about being made redundant by anarticle at NOLA.com. Stay classy Newhouse.
The city has been in denial about this development: there are petition drives to stop the demolition derby but Newhouse isn’t even interested in selling. They have a point to make and they’re going to make it. The Picayune as we know it is on life support and will bedead in the fall. Butstupidity, not the internet killed it.
A good source of info on the carnage is theGambit’s twitter feed. The hashtag#T-Pis also busier than a crazy monkey.
Condolences to all my friends at the Picayune: some of whom were sacked or demoted and even to the editors who were obliged by their corporate masters to transform the paper’s HQ into an abatoir.
Actually Finney was purchased by Tom Benson who plans to rename him “The Bishop” He will write a bi-monthly column for FOX8live.com focused mainly on the glory years of New Orleans Catholic high school football from the 40s and 50s.
I hope Benson plans to provide him with booze. Mr. Finney is an old school drinking man.
As you well know better than I, The Picayune may or may not be on life support (that is, a lot of papers are pleading as paupers even while they are still making a profit – just not as big a profit as they want).
But if it is on “life support”, how is a life support patient supposed to recover in the midst of having parts routinely cut off and organs harvested for sale on the transplant open market?
@Maple: Picayune is *now* on life support. It’s been profitable for the last 4 years. Newhouse is gambling that advertisers wihh have to buy at NOLA.com without a daily paper.