Five LSU Manship School of Mass Communication professors, administrators and a graduate student said during a Monday panel discussion of their new book on the daily Times-Picayune’s shift in 2012 to tri-weekly and digital that media should still retain its function as a watchdog despite its evolution to online reporting.
“News Evolution or Revolution?: The Future of Print Journalism in the Digital Age,” is the story of The Times-Picayune as “sort of microcosm for the industry,” said Riley Center Director Amy Reynolds, who edited the book and served as the panel’s moderator.
The just-released book details how The Times-Picayune how these different areas influence history and how things have changed over time, she said. “How does this reflect where the future of newspapers is headed?”
Manship School Dean Jerry Ceppos, Associate Dean Andrea Miller, Professors Jinx Broussard and Lance Porter, and doctoral student Paromita Saha penned chapters reflecting their specialties in mass communication.
The book also touched on the future of photojournalism and the interaction between politicians and changing media.
Broussard outlined how The Times-Picayune began operating through NOLA.com. The website’s first test in breaking news came when the newspaper could not print for a three-day stretch during Hurricane Katrina.
“That was a precursor to what eventually happened with The Times-Picayune going to its digital platform,” Broussard said. “That was providing news that people needed to have.”
Miller, discussing the New Orleans media during the crises of Hurricane Katrina and the British Petroleum oil spill in 2010, looked at The Times-Picayune’s content before and after its digital rebranding. She said the online product features more sports and entertainment content and less public affairs reporting than the printed newspaper does.
“[Online media] not only changes the way you access the information, but it also changes the information you are getting,” Miller said.
Ceppos, a long-time newspaper executive, said even he was shocked by the “collapse of the business model for newspapers” as online reporting became prominent. Advertising revenue generated by newspapers decreased by more than half from 2001 to 2012, he said, while Google alone currently earns more advertising dollars than newspapers did in 2001.
Saha detailed the New Orleans media’s reaction to The Times-Picayune’s reduced printing schedule. She referred to the media market as a “symbiotic ecosystem” despite the increased competition from other news outlets, bloggers and independent websites.
Porter polled 1,000 News Orleans residents on their reaction to The Times-Picayune’s shift to online reporting and found less than half of those surveyed knew NOLA.com was the newspaper’s online entity.
“I thought [The Times-Picayune was] brave in what it was trying to do in the beginning, but it still hasn’t quite found its way,” Porter said. “If you look at the numbers, they’re still down this year from where they were last year, digitally.”
Saha said the modern fast-paced newsroom could cause reporters to lose sight of traditional journalistic values, such as objectivity and accuracy.
“It’s an exciting time, but also a very demanding time,” Saha said. “Whereas the routines and norms are still the same as when I started in the industry about 15 years ago, now you’re having to break news across different platforms.”
Ceppos said the changing media landscape gives young journalists a chance to accelerate their careers by reporting through various forms of media.
“You can make your own way and develop your own brand in all sorts of different ways,” Ceppos said. “You don’t have to wait 50 years or 30 years to come up with a great new idea.”