When John Georges purchased the Baton Rouge Advocate three years ago, he set about on an ambitious program of expansion into New Orleans and Lafayette.
Taking advantage of the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s contraction to publishing on three days a week, he began hiring reporters and editors from the New Orleans newspaper and it looked as though The Advocate might actually buck the trend of newsroom cutbacks plaguing publications across the country.
It looked for a while as if it might actually work but it turns out that a retired Advocate reporter was most probably correct when he recently said, “We’re all dinosaurs now.”
There’s no joy in this latest trend or in the retired reporter’s assessment of an industry in indisputable decline. And after having entered the profession 50 years ago at the Ruston Daily Leader, I certainly took no pleasure in watching the New York Times as it first sold its office building in 2004 and only last week announced buyouts to encourage early retirement in order to further cut costs.
The Advocate had already laid off some very good reporters and now LouisianaVoice has learned that additional cutbacks are expected to be announced at the end of this month.
The layoff syndrome has become a vicious cycle in the newspaper industry and the thinking behind it defies logic. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/22/the-declining-value-of-u-s-newspapers/
Tom Kelly, the man who gave me my first newspaper job exactly 50 years ago, recently said that the one commodity a newspaper has to offer its readers is fresh, thorough and compelling news stories. “The ads pay the bills, but people buy a newspaper for news and it defies logic that they cut back on the one thing that sells their papers,” he said.
Kelly, who now publishes The Piney Woods Journal, a monthly publication geared mostly to the timber industry in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas, also had some decidedly uncomplimentary words for Gannett, which he said is gobbling up newspapers at an alarming rate.
Gannett’s initial foray into Louisiana included The Shreveport Times and Monroe Morning World (now The News-Star) but it has expanded its reach into Lafayette (The Advertiser), Opelousas (The Daily World), and Alexandria (The Town Talk). Along the way, it gutted their news staffs to a fraction of their former size.
Besides its national publication, USA Today (referred to by critics as “McNewspaper”) Gannett now runs 117 newspapers in 33 states and Guam. “And now, Gannett is trying to buy the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times,” Kelly said. “Their news coverage is pitiful and they want to buy two of the largest papers in the country.” His voice trailed off as he just shook his head in disgust.
So now, one of only two major dailies left in private hands (The Lake Charles American Press is the other), is about to undergo yet another cut. It’s almost as if Bobby Jindal was making the decisions on how to heal an ailing industry. http://newspaperdeathwatch.com/
Advertising revenue is down as are subscriptions. That’s generally true at all newspapers. And just in case no one has noticed, the actual physical size of newspapers has shrunk from broadsheet (23.5 by 29.5 inches) to Berliner (12.4 by 18.5 inches) to save money on newsprint. http://www.papersizes.org/newspaper-sizes.htm
The Jena Times was perhaps the last Louisiana publication to switch to the smaller page, making the conversion only a few months ago.
So, in order to attract more advertising and increase subscriptions, the only logical thing for The Advocate to do is to lay off more personnel. http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/newspapers-fact-sheet/
At least the beat reporters may be spared this round. Word is the cuts will be to the copy desk. The reports we’re getting is that The Advocate will be converting to an updated automated system that will make much of the copy desk’s work obsolete. All the copy desk does is edit reporters’ stories, select the local and wire stories the paper will run, write the headlines for them and decided where in the paper they will run.
For the life of me, I can’t comprehend how automation will be able to make those decisions without benefit of the human element.
The demise of the Times-Picayune and the recent and future cutbacks at The Advocate are not something this old dinosaur subscriber takes pleasure in watching.
It’s like witnessing the slow, painful death of an old friend.
Louisiana Voice 
You mean to tell us that the copy desk still exists at The Advocate? If eliminated, how would we know the difference? I see terrible writing, poor grammar, misspelled words, headlines that do not match the story content, and stories repeated in the same issue, sometimes on the same spread. Journalistic excellence is a thing of the past.
As for subscriptions declining, some people read only online while other dinosaurs, like myself, prefer the actual paper version of a newspaper, which has greater content and is easier to “navigate.” But. like many of our friends, we cancelled our subscription a couple of years ago, after complaining to customer service that the carriers could no longer seem to find our house. We received papers at that address for decades but suddenly we were paying for papers that never arrived. Having to buy a newspaper at a store on a regular basis, we solved that aggravation very simply. Cancelled the subscription after 40 years.
So Mr. Georges, if you want revenue, you have to provide something of value for the price you charge. Well written content and an actual newspaper delivered every day would be a good start.
Exactly my sentiments as well, EM. I got tired of retrieving my paper from the gutter every day, sometimes after someone had run over it. It used to be kids (me too, way back when) from the neighborhood that delivered the paper to your front door. Now it’s some anonymous person who drives by at full speed and throws it in the vague direction of your house. And that driveby versus community attitude is a metaphor. I mourn the demise of investigative journalism by reporters and editors who actually held ideals about what their community should be, about what was right and what was just plain wrong. If the Advocate hired a bunch of investigative reporters and idealistic editors to support them, stopped printing press releases without checking the facts, moved sports off the front page unless it was something notable like a championship, and began to value taking a position over an unexamined, so-called balanced perspective…then they would have a loyal base of subscribers. I still see a glimmer of a once great newspaper at the Advocate, but one has to wade through so much mediocrity that fewer and fewer want to pay for it.
My parents and my nextdoor neighbors are the only people I know who actually still get physical newspapers. Neither are big technology users. Fortunately, the person who delivers to them is consistent. Unfortunately, the trash ads that The Advocate sends out weekly are delivered timely also. Nothing stops them. We recycle them when received unopened and unread every week at my household.
I get all of my news online. My sales are emailed to me…sometimes two or more times a day. Apparently, I have such a horribly short attention span that places like Michaels, Kohls, and The Gap don’t think I’ll remember they’re having a sale unless they email me 3 or 4 times each day. Last year was the first year I did not look at the printed sales ads the day before Thanksgiving. My entire shopping experience was online. Who really has time for the mall these days, anyway?
I hate reading poorly written news articles with headlines that are misspelled or grammatically incorrect. Without being told there were actually editors or proofreaders, I’d never have believed it. Newspapers are not what they once were. While technology is fantastic, it is not that reliable when insuring that spelling and grammar are correct. You can no longer get unbiased news. There’s no end to the frustration.
More than the death of an old friend! Wasn’t freedom of the press important enough to make its way into our early political culture? Wasn’t the free press part of the soul of democracy?
Correct. Thomas Jefferson said, “If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter.” http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2009/05/04/with-no-newspapers-as-thomas-jefferson-knew-democracy-suffers
The Advocate’s website is really terrible to navigate these days. Pop-ups non-stop, and the content continues to decline. Sad.
Earthmother and Hibw pretty much summed it all up, but I’ll say this:
1. I quit the print subscription (after over 50 years in our family) in January of 2014 when The Advocate saw fit to put some local singer (Allison Rhys, I think) on the FRONT PAGE entailing some dispute she had with her husband on their front lawn and simultaneously steadfastly REFUSED to print ONE WORD on what REALLY transpired at the Murphy Painter trial (nor run an editorial I wrote on it after giving me written assurance that my editorial had been approved and was set to be published — Peter Kovacs was said to ultimately kill it).
2. Effective 12/5/15, I discontinued even going to the online website. Without citing specifics (which I could EASILY do), I’ll just say several writers would draft articles that were FACTUALLY wrong!! No matter how many times me and another guy, Phil Beaver, would point out that the article was FACTUALLY wrong, they would reprint the same darn thing a week or so later! We BOTH repeatedly asked, “How many times are you going to print this inaccurate assessment?”
I made four broad exceptions to my self-imposed ban on the website:
A. Any article KNOWN to be written by Marsha Shuler. That exception didn’t even last 20 days as they let her go before Christmas! She was a DARN talented reporter, but at least she quickly landed on her feet working for Jay Dardenne’s office. I’m no Dardenne fan (for OBVIOUS reasons), but I was nevertheless glad for her.
B. Any article KNOWN to be written by Joe Gyan. He’s an excellent court reporter, and I hope he isn’t let go, but who the hell knows anymore?
C. An obituary upon learning of the death of a friend or family member.
D. I’m led there by a link contained within an article elsewhere in which I don’t feel the author of what I’m reading adequately summed up what was said in the Advocate article itself (which is EXTREMELY rare).
I can honestly say I don’t feel I’ve missed out on a darn thing since 12/5/15, and I’m not surprised that particular publication is floundering.
And one more thing – unapologetically hardhitting, factual, objective news reporting where reporters are unafraid to ask the hard questions and hold people’s feet to the fire to get the answers, sells newspapers. Nicey-nicey whitewashed, bland and obsequious pieces do not. There’s a place for features and human interest and there’s a place – and even a responsibility – for hard news. Concern for hurt feelings has no place in the news business. For evidence of that, read LouisianaVoice.
All the best Advocate reporters are gone or muzzled. Thank goodness for decent, well written editorials. Thanks, Lanny and Danny.
A sad reflection of the times.
It’s not that people have been become disinterested in fair and honest reporting. It simply doesn’t exist anymore. People don’t trust newspapers. Period. Show me a newspaper not afraid to call Hillary Clinton out for being a corrupt liar, and I’ll subscribe and read it every day. Instead, newspapers show their natural political bias, and no one wants to ask her a serious question. She cake walks to the Democratic nomination while staring down a criminal indictment. They all did it to to themselves.
No, the MSM press has not directly called Hillary Clinton a corrupt liar, nor have they done the same with Donald Trump, though I think that term certainly apples to him (along with a litany of others), don’t you? On a danger scale, I think Trump would leave Clinton in his wake. So, we have 2 poor choices for POTUS at the moment. Who would you choose if you voted today?
I don’t disagree, Stephen. I hate both choices. They are both crony capitalists. If I had to vote today, I’d vote for Trump because of the Supreme Court. However, I would do so with great hesitation and probably holding my nose.
For all its faults, The ADVOCATE remains the best print newspaper in Louisiana. I mourn its loss in advance. When it devotes the time and effort, as Gordon Russell has done with the corrections issues (with help from Maya Lau), it proves it is still possible for an actual newspaper to do good investigative reporting, but it is woefully understaffed with reporter who can do so.
Tyler Bridges is a great writer and reporters like Elizabeth Crisp and Maya Lau are capable and clearly put work into their pieces. Reporters like Marsha Shuler and Robert Morgan (long time Alexandria Town Talk capitol reporter) are gone and would not have the luxury of the time necessary to do what they did if they were still around. The ADVOCATE also good features and an adequate sports section.
I agree with earthmother about Danny Heitman and Lanny Keller. I almost always agree with Mark Ballard’s pieces. James Gill and Stephanie Grace are treasures. I do not understand, and have complained to everybody I could about the existence of Sadow’s Sunday column – it would be different if it had enough intellectual honesty to provide balance, but it is worthless at its best and feeds the same biases and prejudices as The Hayride blog and Donald Trump at its worst.
LouisianaVoice, Something Like the Truth, CenLamar and other blogs have already stepped into the breach to provide independent journalism and between The ADVOCATE and nola.com it is possible to get MSM Louisiana news. But electronic news is just not the same as a real newspaper in any sense. Politicians might read some blogs and online papers, but they do not have nearly the affect that hardcopy editorial pages do. As C. B. used to say, they actually read letters to the editor in the papers and those letters influence them more than almost anything else.
So, unless The ADVOCATE is scooped up by Gannett, whose papers barely qualify as fishwrap, I will continue to subscribe. I will also continue to read real books. These three dimensional works of art mean something to me that electronic media doesn’t. And, Smiley Anders simply doesn’t have the same effect online as he does on the left side of the Metro section.
When Mr. Georges bought the paper I hoped he would be willing to use his personal wealth to keep it afloat. I still have that hope – rare in a cynic.
Thank you for pointing out that The Advocate still employs skilled, dedicated journalists, Mr. Winham. I stand corrected and apologize to those reporters you named, and others – my memories are long and I still miss some of the reporters who were my contemporaries in J-School (LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communications). I too, especially enjoy the opinion pieces by Mark Ballard, Stephanie Grace and James Gill, while just skipping Jeff Sadow, as not worthy of the time it takes to read his tripe in disgust. Thanks for naming many of the journalists who work daily to bring hard news to us readers and who exemplify journalistic integrity and excellence.
Now. if only the copy editors could support the reporters’ efforts…
Agreed, SW. The people you name are doing good work under difficult circumstances. But any great reporter these days, and I mean nationally, not just at the Advocate, is like a chef working at a chain restaurant. They rarely get a chance to do great work, and when they do it is obscured by the dross that surrounds it. Does that matter? I think so, and that the escalation of the socioeconomic inequity, xenophobia, and corruption we are currently witnessing is directly related to the demise of principled investigative reporting.
Like many of you all, I prefer to read the printed version. I have not had any trouble with my home delivery. However, I do take issue with the terrible writing, poor grammar, misspelled words, headlines that do not match the story content, and stories repeated in the same issue, sometimes on the same spread. Mr. Burns, I was also happy to hear that Marsha had landed a spot with Jay Dardenne.
Credit to earthmother for the listing in my third sentence.
I agree, but I think under staffing is the problem. My own post above has at least 2 typos I should have caught, but didn’t, and it is difficult for me to edit my own writing. A lot of the continuity and usage problems in the media relate to the over-reliance on software mentioned by another poster here, in addition to liberal cutting and pasting. No software knows all the subtle nuances of usage and many spelling and other errors are the result. For example, in many articles we see the use of the word “ensure” correctly, while others (sometimes in the same article) incorrectly use the subtly different “insure.”
You are correct, Stephen. Actually, as I was typing that post, I thought about the many grammatical and punctuation errors I must have made doing my time with the legislature. But, thanks to, what was then, a very good proofreading staff, they were corrected before the final product was introduced.
The Ponchatoula Times, published by Bryan McMahon, is still broadsheet
The Franklin Banner Tribune is still broadsheet and a fine paper. Mr. Georges has shifted the soul of the Advocate towards the left as we knew he would. If they continue to opine rather than report the news they will end up like the Shreveport Times, an official paper for legal notices, obituaries and advertising. The Times appears to cut and paste their news from USA Today. As Lenin said:”The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.” It’s a shame a lot of our papers buy into this logic.
Good post, Sidwit. I remember when my hometown papers (Morning Advocate AND State-Times) were editorially moderately conservative proponents of good, clean government, endorsing candidates such as Dave Treen and Buddy Roemer, and were fair and unbiased on the news reporting side. That began to change under the younger generation of Manships. Under George’s, the paper has become flat-out liberal.
As for those treasures, Stephanie Grace and James Gill, Grace generally just serves up the usual liberal line, and Gill is a boring gas bag. Far worse, though, is what is happening away from the editorial pages. Story selection and tone show an obvious left-leaning bias. Increasingly, I feel like I am reading a Baton Rouge edition of the 1990s Times-Picayune. Sad.
The only reason we still have a newspaper subscription (Texas) is because my wife is addicted to advertisements and those are only included twice a week. Most coverage is dedicated to sports and currently politics. Of course, there are articles – every day – on the latest shooting or accident victims and a few court cases. There are many times I stop reading at the first paragraph. Most newspapers have tried, unsuccessfully, to employ a paywall strategy for the net access. Locally, investigative reporting is nearly dead. I still remember when the Internet became accessible to everyone over 20 years ago. Many papers with huge advert revenue decided that they would not take job or other advertising for companies that wanted to include their URL for access to the company websites. I glance at online news every couple of days and get a much larger picture of world events that won’t hit the paper till the following day. Actually, living without newspapers, magazines, and TV would be no problem for me.
One bright star is the Louisiana Voice. It’s great simply because it is a labor of love and Tom has other means to keep the pantry full and air in his bicycle tires…
I usually prefer not to post a “me too” comment, but this article strikes a chord with me. I too am a 30+ year subscriber.
I had accustomed myself to fewer real news stories, the stream of editorial comments in news articles, even the inclusion of Jeff Sadow (at least they’re honest enough to put it in the “opinion” section). It pains me to see all of the spelling and grammatical errors, but I’ve accepted them too.
However, I cannot accustom myself to their inability to deliver a paper. When I complain, I cannot even get a call returned. One would think that when the subscription base is shrinking they would take additional care of their existing customers.
They simply do not care.
We all have our favorites, love the print, and I drive to last drop off in Norwood, about 1.5 miles to get my paper, and spill coffee. I get the New Yorker, the Smithsonian, and of course the Nation Magazine. My favorite is LouisianaVoice.ron Thompson
I believe Jeff Sadow’s report on the nursing home debacle was “right on.” Only the powerful lobbyists in cahoots with owners and pouring money into legislators war chests keep even the worst nursing homes in operation. Gives new meaning to the term “money talks.”