Sour Milk: The Nola.com Experience - June 12, 2012

My wife and I decided that if The Times-Picayune owners thought we didn't need the paper four days of the week, we probably didn't need it the other three and canceled our subscription. One regular feature of MySpiltMilk.com (which will be live tomorrow) is going to be documenting my efforts to stay informed through Nola.com. Today's post has a particularly painful backdrop as T-P staffers are learning their fates today. As of this point in the writing, I know that news writer Danny Monteverde won't be a part of the grand online experiment. 

On my iPhone, the top stories at 8:40 a.m. are an editorial suggesting that City Council put charter changes on the ballot and move on. News leads with Jefferson Parish school system's regional parent group on the way, the charter editorial, and a story about a visiting pet program orientation on Saturday. There's weather and entertainment news - local actors and artists pay tribute to the late Ray Bradbury, the story behind Chakula cha Jua's new one many play, and Bieber fever in Mexico City. I have to click to see more. Doug MacCash is a friend, so I click on the companion piece to his cha Jua story, a video of the playwright walking in his neighborhood - or so I gather from the headline. The video player doesn't show up on my phone. Additional entertainment news includes a Joy Behar story, the That's My Boy trailer, a David Arquette story, the Percy Jackson sequel will shoot in New Orleans, Gerard Butler will shoot in Shreveport, and a recap of the season opener for True Blood. I don't get Behar, Bieber or Arquette on a pared-down version of the website, but otherwise, good enough.

Following the News link, I find stories on the Algiers Charter Schools association making changes, the Jeff Parish school system story, the City Council editorial, the pet program story, an obituary, an op-ed piece from Stephanie Grace, a BP-related editorial, an anti-bullying session at a library, a judge voids a death sentence for an inmate convicted of a 1995 triple murder, and Jeff Parish school officials' plan to deal with the system's deficit. Based on Nola.com's smart phone presence, I can't even guess at what today's top story is, though I'd think the voided death sentence might be more significant that the pet program and the bullying story for starters.

The Nola.com app includes "Headlines" and "Top Stories" as menu options, so maybe I'll get a more coherent overview of the news there. Headlines: Tangipahoa Parish introduces oil, gas drilling, the Algiers charter school association changes, the Jeff Parish school system's parent ... thing (I can't summarize this one based on the headline), the City Council editorial, the pet program, the obituary, Grace's op-ed, and so on. This appears to more or less follow the news flow at Nola.mobi, and thankfully buried is the story of the dismembered woman, whose friends say she was a "good mom." Is that really a story? What else are they going to say? Also buried because it went online at 6:45 a.m. is the story of mosquitoes being out in record number, which seems more newsworthy to me.

"Top Stories" still follows a chronological order, though there seems to be some decision-making going on regarding what appears. I thought it might be shaped by the number of comments, but no comments - a strong plus for the Nola.com app. (Speaking of - how can Nola.com plan to be a website for the city when its commenters keep the air of racism palpable?) 

Finally, a visit to Nola.com, where for the first time I learn that the Hornets turned down a trade offer from the Cavs. The reassignment of Marlin Gusman is a fixture at the top of the page along with the story about the dismembered good mom (where the comments stream took a strongly moralistic turn). Below that: "Gov. Bobby Jindal has vetoed 12 bills so far this session," "Keep bugs at bay as metro New Orleans gets more rain: An editorial" and "In New Orleans, not even little girls are safe from violence" by Jarvis DeBerry, followed by stories I saw on the app and the mobi site.

To be fair, the news looks a lot more like the news at 8:40 than it did when I first looked at 6:45 this morning. Early risers may be facing mundane mornings if they try to read Nola.com with the morning coffee. Also, like the AnnArbor.com site, there is a menu of top stories in each section at the foot of the page. You've got to scroll to get to it, but you can see more of the stories without having to click into the menu bars at the top of the page. Still, the chronological news feed dominates the home page, forcing readers to work around the home page for a more focused presentation of the news. 

Finally, if people want to stop the proposed three-days-a -week printing schedule, someone's going to have to protest. Employees at the paper have said they don't want it, we don't want it, and advertisers have now said that they don't want it. But if we all keep our anger and frustration between ourselves, nothing will change the plans. Polite gatherings don't make the same statement as a big group more interested in results than commiseration. Since I started writing, Brett Anderson announced on Twitter that he's been let go.

The T-P Rally & America's Petri Dish

On Monday afternoon, New Orleans protested in New Orleans fashion. The Save the Times-Picayune Rally in the parking lot of the Rock 'n' Bowl featured beer, costumes - including Joan of Arc and an accompanying knight - and music. Kermit Ruffins joined the Lonely, Lonely Knights to wing a new song, "Do the Times-Picayune," and Allen Toussaint played a set of his classics backed by Rod Hodges and Rene Coman of the Iguanas with Carlo Nuccio on drums. Pianist Bob Andrews finished his set with a version of Smiley Lewis' "Shame Shame Shame," taking a tip from Treme and rewriting it for the moment as "Shame Shame Shame Times-Pic'yune."

As rallies go, the event was more a chance for past and present Times-Picayune employees and paper supporters to vent their frustrations at the decision by Newhouse to make Nola.com the focus and cut staff, salaries, and the daily paper down to three days a week. "This is not a part-time city; we don't deserve a part-time paper," organizer Michael Tisserand said from the stage. Many in the crowd wore T-shirts that read: "The Times-Picayune: We publish come hell and high water" - T-shirts that were given to the paper's staff after its coverage Hurricane Katrina - to remind Newhouse of the implicit promise that it had made to them. "This [promise] is being broken in ways we couldn't have imagined," said Lolis Eric Elie, who wrote at The Times-Picayune until he took the buy-out and left in 2009.

Frustrations ran high. Nobody likes the current state of Nola.com and its emphasis on the newest news, which at the moment of this writing is:

1. Police morale support group

2. Shrimpers meet in Plaquemines to hear federal turtle protection plans

3. A seat belts are for law enforcement officials too editorial

4. Olsen twins win fashion prize

5. An op-ed piece on Gregory Aymond's killing

6. Cissy Houston to write a Whitney Houston bio

7. Report on woody debris in West Bank levee delayed again

8. Independence woman dies in traffic accident near Tickfaw

9. Navy renews charter of civilian-owned, state-operated ship

10. Kenner Mayor Mike Yenni should have sought bids before renewing garbage contract editorial

If you read your iPad at 8:30 a.m., those would have been your headlines.

The uncertainty about the future of jobs and the future of journalism was conversation topic number one. Some took the delay in informing staffers of their futures with the paper/website as a sign that the outcry was having an effect, while others figured the postponed announcement had more to do with mundane, bureaucratic housework and that nothing had changed. 

A regular question was "Why us?" There are less newsworthy towns to experiment on and ones with less loyal readerships, and that's the heart of my anger at this situation. The daily paper has been a part of my life since I clipped the funnies out of the papers on one cross-country and made my own book of comic strips in a photo album. I still read the paper on my back porch with the dog first thing in the morning, but Newhouse is not responsible for my routines. I'll start my day another way, and it will continue to start. 

Ultimately, I'm also not sold on anti-Nola.com argument. It sucks but it's solvable, and AnnArbor.com has already solved some of them. I'm conscious of the act of reading a paper, so I'm aware of the way I can be drawn to a story I wouldn't have chosen based on its headline, but I suspect that the more time I spend reading on Nola.com, the more I'm going to become conscious of other forms of opportunity reading (for lack of a better term). Writing on the web can be as rich and in-depth as writing for print if not moreso because of the possibilities that links make available. The younger readers who interact with Nola.com first aren't less intelligent for doing so, and they probably have their own nuanced reading experience that we'll discover when it becomes our primary interface with the news. 

The question is will it? Will Newhouse continue to value the news-gathering work done by The Times-Picayune's reporters? Will it still take 20-plus paragraphs-long stories? Will it create a context that values and encourages such work? Based on what we've heard so far including the plans to move the staff into new office space in the CBD, it sounds like they have other priorities. And to sacrifice jobs and cut salaries for people who have succeeded in ways most newspapers envy is cruel. 

What upsets me most is that once again New Orleanians are the guinea pigs for an experiment. Since Katrina, we are America's petri dish. Want to test theories on education? New Orleans is broken - go there. Want to test theories on public housing? New Orleans' projects have been emptied - go there. Now Newhouse wants to test its ideas about 21st Century publishing on us, and in each case, the realities of our lives are taken for granted. Our children are test subjects, our poor are simply a demographic in mixed income neighborhoods, and we're potential clicks for a publishing house. In each case, our lives are devalued and our interests discounted. The people who will lose their jobs are not abstract entities or job titles; they have families and car payments and lives. Our traditions (more likely habits) are what they are, and they're part of the fabric of our lives. For Newhouse to dismiss our lives and the impacts the decision will have so summarily is a profoundly hostile act that will not be forgotten.

How Disneylanding Happens, Pt. 29

[Updated] In today's T-P, James Gill analyzes a tourism "master plan" written for New Orleans by Boston-based consultants in 2009. I'd link to it, but I swear to God I can't find it on Nola.com (if anybody can, send me the link and I'll update). Gill sees the now-defunct hospitality zone proposal as a direct result of this consulting group's recommendations:

The goal of the master plan is for New Orleans to attract 12.7 million visitors in 2018, up from 7.6 million in 2009.

Who goes to Disneyland? Tourists.

... and since Nola.com derailed my linking, I'll take a moment to say, "Whatthehell?" The top stories as of writing:
1. Unity's new facility for the homeless
2. Former Liberian president Charles Taylor sentenced to 50 years
3. Slidell Little Theater makes posters
4. LSU softball team letter to the editor
5. Kenner playground makes improvements
6. Announcement of a Fourth District crime stat meeting
7. Fatal shooting at birthday caught on tape (the paper's top story)
8. An obituary
9. Steve Kelley's cartoon (such as it is)
10. Weather
11. Road closures
12. Metro community meetings
13. Elder abuse prevention in Slidell
14. Top five iPhone apps

That's what I supposed to look forward to waking up and reading? Three actual stories? And Taylor snuck in between when I started this post and when I got this section of it.

(Coming soon: MySpiltMilk.com)

Update 11:26 a.m.
Since I posted this morning, Gill's piece was posted at Nola.com. The link has been added and my vexation has been stroked out.

Hold the Line(s)

Today, Peter Finney wrings his hands in The Times-Picayune about the condition of the Saints' offensive and defensive lines. They weren't impressive, but they were my one source of concern going into Thursday's game simply because of the amount of change in both units during a very short pre-season. Our O line has two new bodies in Olin Kreutz and Zach Streif (as a starter), and our front seven on defensive is undergoing major transition, particularly in the first two weeks with Will Smith out. With all that change going on, it didn't surprise me that they didn't play as well as units as they needed to, and I suspect if that game took place a month from now, we'd see a stouter set of lines.