Journalism in an era of onerous deadlines? Not so good anymore

Producing the equivalent of a book every 24 hours, seven days a week, is difficult. That’s what daily newspapers do day after day. Sadly, in New Orleans, readers will receive only three books a week instead of seven.

The Times-Picayune will print its book only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Those are the only days advertising revenue is sufficient to justify the cost of ink and paper. The Times-Picayune is not the first paper to reduce print editions. Detroit papers did that several years ago. And other papers in the NOLA Media Group will curtail print editions.

The Times-Picayune, which won the Pulitzer Prize for brilliant coverage of Hurricane Katrina, will become less than it was. The staff will be depleted as management seeks, like virtually every newspaper, to successfully marry financial gains on the Web to (hopefully) good journalism. A decade of arrogant, errant actions and inaction by newspapers’ decision-makers has so far failed to consistently produce either.

There are reasons for that: corporate failure to recognize the Internet as a valid competitor, free access to online content for all comers, the wholesale firings of thousands of journalists, belated and botched attempts at paywalls, and so on.

But consider two others, one historical, one behavioral.

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