Papers battle for New Orleans

Old-timer’s shift to Web opens window for competitor

Special to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette - 06/25/2013 - Street musician T.S. Lark reads a copy of the new Times-Picayune Street edition Tuesday morning, June 25, 2013, on the Mississippi River park near the New Orleans French Quarter.  A year ago, The Times-Picayune laid off a large part of its staff and began to publish a newspaper just three days a week. Since that time, the Baton Rouge Advocate has ramped up its operation in New Orleans in order to compete with The Times-Picayune, including home delivery seven days a week. A newspaper war has broken out with The Times-Picayune now publishing six days a week to compete with the Advocate. (Photo by Chuck Cook)
Special to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette - 06/25/2013 - Street musician T.S. Lark reads a copy of the new Times-Picayune Street edition Tuesday morning, June 25, 2013, on the Mississippi River park near the New Orleans French Quarter. A year ago, The Times-Picayune laid off a large part of its staff and began to publish a newspaper just three days a week. Since that time, the Baton Rouge Advocate has ramped up its operation in New Orleans in order to compete with The Times-Picayune, including home delivery seven days a week. A newspaper war has broken out with The Times-Picayune now publishing six days a week to compete with the Advocate. (Photo by Chuck Cook)

NEW ORLEANS - On this muggy summer morning, a group of longtime friends gathers at the Fair Grinds coffeehouse on Ponce de Leon Street. After shoving a couple of tables together, the coffee klatch launches happily into a volley of strong opinions on the morning’s news and politics.

Today, these old friends are fewer in number than usual, thanks to the previous evening’s festivities, when the beer and liquor flowed a bit too freely. But this morning’s group - proudly immune to the collective hangover plaguing their absent friends - wouldn’t dream of missing out on their 20-year-old daily ritual.

In the past, copies of The Times-Picayune would have littered the table, the stories within the newspaper’s pages serving as fodder for lively discussion.

Not anymore. Today, only a lone copy of The New Orleans Advocate is circulated.

“The T-P is basically dead to us,” Scott Sanders declares.

“They squandered 175 years of good will,” Joe Mole agrees.

“Most of us were lifelong subscribers,” Sanders continues. “But as of last fall, we dropped it.”

The Fair Grinds friends quit reading The Times-Picayune in October 2012, when the newspaper ceased to be a daily publication. For years, The Times-Picayune had landed on doorsteps each morning. Now it is printed and delivered only three days a week - Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

For a city that cherishes its traditions, The Times-Picayune’s decision was simply unacceptable to readers. Many felt betrayed. This was, after all, the newspaper that had taken on the federal government in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It had ensured that New Orleans’ plight wasn’t ignored or forgotten.

Nationally, The Times-Picayune was highly regarded by journalists. It exposed political corruption, published investigative stories that won a couple of Pulitzer Prizes and reported diligently on efforts to rebuild after Katrina.

But then, it seemed, The Times-Picayune had turned on not only its city and readers, but also 200 of its own employees, firing dozens upon dozens of reporters and photographers who had become beloved household names.

Many of the city’s movers and shakers tried in vain to persuade the newspaper’s owner, Advance Publications, to sell The Times-Picayune to someone who would maintain the newspaper’s daily publication.

Advance Publications - owned by the New Yorkbased Newhouse family - refused.

Instead, The Times-Picayune - now known as The Times-Picayune NOLA.com - tried to direct readers to its website on the days that the newspaper wasn’t published. And again, readers protested, arguing that the website was “clunky” - difficult to navigate and cluttered with so many stories that it was impossible to find the local news of the day.

But as New Orleanians alternately seethed and mourned the loss of their daily paper, the owners of Baton Rouge’s daily newspaper, The Advocate, slipped quietly into action.

POISED TO COMPETE

Until 2009, The Advocate had maintained a presence in New Orleans with a single correspondent. By 2012, even that one-man connection to New Orleans was long gone.

But with The Times-Picayune scaling back operations in its own city, opportunity tapped coyly at The Advocate’s door.

Owned by Capital City Press at that time, The Advocate appeared to be in an ideal position for a foray into New Orleans, which is an 80-minute drive away.

Its most effective weapon: a lightning-fast, six-story tall offset printing press that would easily accommodate a New Orleans edition.

But The Advocate also would need a New Orleans-based news staff to truly take on The Times-Picayune.

By early September 2012, The Advocate was shopping for journalists and office space, even as it wooed potential advertisers and subscribers. By month’s end, it had assembled a staff of six - all of whom had once worked for The Times-Picayune - and was preparing to home-deliver a New Orleans edition to 35 ZIP codes.

The new edition hit doorsteps in October, although not without some circulation and delivery snafus, says Peter Kovacs, who was hired only a few months ago as The Advocate’s editor.

“It’s not a small thing to start delivering 20,000 newspapers in a town you hadn’t been in before,” he notes wryly.

Kovacs was one of two managing editors at The Times-Picayune who fell victim to the 2012 layoffs that coincided with The Times-Picayune’s slimmed-down publication schedule. The other was Dan Shea, who now serves as general manager of The Advocate.

“It’s kind of a Hollywood ending,” admits Kovacs, who worked at The Times-Picayune for 29 years.

Kovacs and Shea were hired in May by New Orleans businessman John Georges, who had just bought The Advocate from Publisher David Manship. Until then, The Advocate had been owned and operated by Capital City Press, founded in 1909 by Charles Manship Sr. and James Edmonds.

Georges is known by New Orleanians as the guy who took his Greek family’s small business - a wholesale grocery distribution company - and turned it into a billion-dollar operation. Georges also is a co-proprietor of the famed Galatoire’s Restaurant.

Once Georges took the helm of The Advocate, changes came quickly.

For one, the newspaper delivered in New Orleans wouldn’t be just a zoned edition of The Advocate. Instead, newsroom leaders began calling it The New Orleans Advocate.

Kovacs promptly lured away two veteran editors from The Times-Picayune. Gordon Russell was named managing editor of investigations, and Martha Carr became managing editor of The New Orleans Advocate. At that same time, Kovacs hired two more Times-Picayune reporters.

The four quit The Times-Picayune on the same day.

The New Orleans Advocate now employs nine full-time reporters, an assistant editor and one full-time photographer. All of them once worked at The Times-Picayune. All of them now compete daily with their former colleagues.

“This is a situation where you have very dear friends working for different news organizations. It’s a heartbreaker,” Carr says.

But pangs of nostalgia aren’t enough to squash The New OrleansAdvocate’s goal to always get the scoop.

“It’s a little strange,” agrees Laura Maggi, also a recent hire from The Times-Picayune. “We still respect all the folks over there, but we also want to put out the best newspaper of the day.”

Initially, journalists at The New Orleans Advocate considered the printed Times-Picayune and NOLA.com to be a gauge for how they were faring in their quest for scoops and investigative stories.

In late June, however, The Times-Picayune debuted a tabloid that is now available at stores and newsstands on the days that The Times-Picayune isn’t delivered. Dubbed TP Street, the tab is an attempt to placate still-angry readers, says longtime Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss.

“When we reduced the home delivery frequency, we heard from readers,” Amoss explains. “There was a significant percentage of readers who said, ‘We miss having a printed newspaper in our hands over coffee or tea.’ We realized we had left a void on those days.”

At the same time, “home-delivery seven days a week is a model that can’t be sustained,” Amoss adds, which is why Advance Publications decide to compromise with a newsstand tabloid.

He estimates that each TP Street will be 44-68 pages, depending on the number of ads and obituaries. Like other tabloids, the front features a single image and large headline.

Those monitoring the unique newspaper situation in New Orleans see TP Street as the latest gauntlet thrown in a full-fledged “newspaper war.” But those in the midst of the fray are hesitant to use that term.

‘A NEWS WAR’

These days, there aren’t many cities with two competing newspapers. It’s even more unusual for an existing newspaper to invade another paper’s city.

Jerry Ceppos, a veteran newspaper editor and the current dean of Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communications, says he sees the situation more as a “news war.” That’s because The Times-Picayune is competing on two fronts: online and in print.

“This news war, it’s being fought on all sorts of platforms,” Ceppos says.

He and two professors are working on a book about the escalating competition. Tentatively titled New Evolution or Revolution? New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Future of the Newspaper Industry, the book is scheduled for publication early next year.

“Journalism scholars are going to study this in years to come,” Ceppos predicts. “And it will be interesting to see if the public gets engaged in it,” he adds. “It’s hard to cross county lines. And it’s hard for one organization to serve two very different cities.”

Kovacs agrees, saying that even as The Advocate ventures into New Orleans, it also must show its Baton Rouge readers that they remain important and well-served. “You don’t want people in Baton Rouge to feel like their newspaper was taken over by the hippies from New Orleans,” he says.

As for what some are calling the “Battle of New Orleans,” Kovacs also is reluctant to call this a newspaper war.

“Is it a war? Not completely, because our business model is to deliver a daily newspaper. Their model is something else,” he explains.

Also, Kovacs adds, The Times-Picayune NOLA.com appears unfazed by The Advocate’s decision to invade its turf.

“I don’t think they see themselves as competitors. Our business model is, ‘People want a daily newspaper.’”

Amoss confirms this. “Is it a war? I think not. The news market is incredibly competitive.”

Where breaking news is concerned, he adds, “The people giving us the most run for our money are the television websites.”THE PIRATES

Inside a nondescript storefront on Baronne Street where Advocate staff members work, a large pirate flag hangs over a room crammed with the usual newsroom clutter - stacks of notebooks, cascades of wayward file folders and a variety of caffeinated drinks.

The pirate flag represents an oft-used Steve Jobs quote: “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.”

It’s 4 p.m., the beginning of deadline crunch time. Carr is on the phone, conducting a budget meeting, during which editors decide what stories will run and where they will be “played” on the pages. Meanwhile, a small army of reporters begins crafting the day’s news into stories for tomorrow’s home-delivered daily.

Desks are crammed into the small space, making things a little cramped. A few more are on order, Carr says, in anticipation of the arrival of two new reporters, who will be moving from the Baton Rouge newsroom to help bolster the New Orleans staff.

On a bulletin board, that day’s editions of The Times-Picayune and The New Orleans Advocate hang side by side, allowing editors and reporters to compare stories, photos and how each paper played the news of the day.

The New Orleans Advocate is still trying to fashion itself into a true local newspaper, as opposed to a subsidiary of Baton Rouge, Kovacs says.

For example, The New Orleans Advocate recently started running New Orleans obituaries. Still, Kovacs and others say, much remains to be done. A redesign, which is hoped to make the paper look more New Orleanian, is in the works, as well.

Kovacs, who routinely calls New Orleans readers who have stopped their subscriptions to his paper, says many of them pointed out that while the front and metro pages are full of New Orleans news, the inside pages still belong to Baton Rouge.

“People felt like this is a Baton Rouge newspaper with a veneer of New Orleans on it,” Kovacs says. “That disappointed them.”

What’s been surprising, he adds, is how nice people are when he calls to ask why they stopped their subscriptions.

“They know the narrative. They were unhappy with the T-P, so they took us. They’ll say, ‘I feel bad that I stopped it, but I want more local stuff.’”

The Fair Grinds friends say they aren’t ready to commit to The New Orleans Advocate quite yet, explaining that it still isn’t local enough.

“We’re all happy about The Advocate being bought,” says a man who calls himself only Henry. “We all want a daily.”

This comment prompts a discussion about the degree of localness needed to make The New Orleans Advocate a regular part of their mornings.

“The front page is New Orleans. The rest is still Baton Rouge,” another reader says over the chatter.

Adds Mole: “It’s getting better.” THE HIGH-RISE

Just a five-minute drive away from the little newsroom on Baronne Street, reporters for The Times-Picayune NOLA.com search for empty desks on the 32nd floor of One Canal Place, a riverfront high-rise known primarily for the upscale stores that occupy its lower floors.

Reporters and photographers moved earlier this year from their old quarters on Howard Street to this gleaming building that overlooks the river.

Here, no one is assigned a desk. Instead, reporters are expected to work remotely, using laptops and smartphones to file stories within moments after news breaks. Sometimes, that means a story may be only one or two paragraphs long, Amoss says.

On an average day, reporters will file anywhere from 150-170 stories on NOLA.com. Some of these will end up in print, featured in either The Times-Picayune or TP Street. Critics contend this process has turned what used to be an award-winning newspaper known for stunningly in-depth investigations into a receptacle for what’s already appeared on NOLA.com.

Amoss says investigative stories are still being written but will typically appear on the website first in an effort to direct readers online. This is, after all, the goal: Teaching readers to get their news from NOLA.com.

Most challenging has been persuading reporters to adopt a different mind-set, Amoss says, adding that he also struggled at first.

“For me, it was hard to get over, ‘I don’t want to put this out before the 10 o’clock news.’ But we want our audience to go to our website. This print deadline isn’t the all-important thing it used to be.”

The same is true for projects or series. “We’re trying to do projects that can be more incremental,” Amoss says, adding that such a story could be posted on the Web on Thursday and then appear in print on Friday.

It’s a significant change for both the staff and readers, he acknowledges. But he’s not worried about losing the loyalty of New Orleanians.

“The thing about The Times-Picayune is that we are so identified with this community. We’ve been around 176 years. People really think of the history of this city as intertwined with the newspaper.”

The New Orleans Advocate is equally confident, however, that it will eventually win over readers who feel abandoned by The Times-Picayune.

Kovacs recalls the days of Walter Cronkite, when Americans got their news from newspapers and only three TV stations. “Everybody sort of started with the same set of facts. And you don’t really have that as much in America anymore. More people get their news from an entity that agrees with them.”

So the small staff on Baronne Street will continue to offer news in a traditional format, still believing in the strength of the printed word.

“They’re an energetic group,” Kovacs says, laughing. “I think they’re enjoying pirate life.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/14/2013

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