Times-Picayune Is Singing the Blues to Angry Readers

As the chief architect of the plan to turn New Orleans into the biggest city in America without a daily newspaper, Ricky Mathews spent the summer having to "take the licks," as he put it in his Mississippi twang, of a ferocious community blowback. But that blowback, he believes, is largely based on the widespread misconception that the Times-Picayune is doing fine financially. In fact, he says, the decision to slash the New Orleans Times-Picayune's print publication to three days a week from seven was driven by falling print ad revenue that threatened to put the paper into the red. Print ad sales fell 23% in 2009, 10% in 2010, 7% in 2011 and 10% so far in 2012.