New Orleans just might be the largest city in the nation without a daily newspaper.
The Atlantic laments that fact.
From an article...
From outside of New Orleans, this entire story seems most perplexing for the fact that seemingly everyone in the city wants a daily newspaper except for the people who have the power to print one – and those people, the Newhouses, have steadfastly refused to sell to new owners who share the community’s wishes. This odd misalignment of interests speaks to a larger question: To whom does a newspaper really belong? Especially when it is the only newspaper in town.
Does the Times-Picayune belong to the Newhouses, the latest in a line of 175 years' worth of stewards, who may do with it whatever they want today? Or does it belong, in some larger sense, to the city itself?
No one can force the Newhouses to blow money the family doesn’t want to on a dying newspaper model. But if other deep pockets in the city are eager to do that – and so many in New Orleans want them to – then that option should be on the table.
New Orleans should have a daily newspaper not because daily newspapers are a great business model (they’re pretty clearly not), nor because daily newspapers play some special role in civic life.
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