What happens when local media have to literally weather the storm
In light of the recent sale of the New Orleans Times-Picayune (which includes cutting its entire staff), we found this CJR piece about how major storms directly affect local newspapers and news stations to be extra sobering, especially since everyone’s been pointing out how the Times-Picayune literally won two Pulitzers for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2006.
The angle taken by this piece also just really underlines the fact that most local media outlets are, at the end of the day, small businesses who have to front the cost of storm damages and get their workforce housed and retain talent just like anyone else — and all of that, of course, is on top of having to weather the never-ending storm that is the already extremely dicey media industry.