NEW ORLEANS — A new era begins in local journalism this week, with the merger of the Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate.
The first edition of the new, locally-owned paper hits the streets on Monday.
WWL-TV's Eric Paulsen spoke to editor Peter Kovacs about the changes and what readers should expect.
Eric Paulsen: Peter, first it was going to be The Advocate | Times-Picayune. Now it's The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate... Why the change?
Peter Kovacs: We spent a long time this week listening to Times-Picayune readers and subscribers and there's a lot of respect…The Times-Picayune's a great brand in New Orleans and it's been damaged by the three day a week delivery schedule, but we're going to bring it back to seven days a week and it's going to be better than ever.
EP: Will it eventually become the Times-Picayune, because it is a brand that is really well known in this city?
PK: It's a little hard to tell, the Advocate was a brand that wasn't known in the city at all seven years ago and obviously it was a big success because in the end, you know in the end, we absorbed the Times-Picayune, it wasn't the other way around, so I think we're just gonna play it by ear. One thing with a locally owned newspaper is that we listen to our readers, we don't have to listen to shareholders in New York or investors and so I think we're gonna play it by ear and see what our customers want.
EP: How unusual is this? Has this sort of thing happened elsewhere recently?
PK: It happened once that I know of in the Tampa Bay area but it's, it's very unusual for a locally-owned media company to take on one of the biggest media companies in the country and you know literally run them out of one of the biggest markets in the country.
EP: What changes will we see when we get that first edition and down the road?
PK: Well, we've absorbed, we've taken in a number of distinctive Times-Picayune writers. You know, we'll have Doug MacCash, we'll have Bob Marshall, we'll have Dan Gill, plus many of the Advocate writers are longtime Times-Picayune people, I'm a longtime Times-Picayune people, Martha Carr and Gordon Russell are longtime Times-Picayune people so I think what we hope is that people will see the daily joined newspaper and it will remember, it will make them remember the golden days of The Times-Picayune.
EP: One of the things you guys wanted was the Nola.com website. Will the New Orleans Advocate website go away or how does that work?
PK: We're going to brand ourselves as NOLA.com, that's a good brand, it has it has good traffic and so if you type in NOLA.com you will go to a re-designed version of our website and if you type in TheNewOrleansAdvocate.com you'll get the same thing and you just will have typed in a lot of extra keystrokes.
EP: And for people who had the Times-Picayune subscription. Will they ease in to you? Will their subscription still hold?
PK: For the first week they will get the The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate joint publication and they will have various incentive ads, it will be wrapped in an incentive ad asking them to upgrade to seven days a week and upgrading to seven days a week is only pennies a day, it does not cost double what three days a week is. Actually, in many cases, people who were getting three days a week were paying a similar amount to what we were charging for seven days a week. So we will encourage them to upgrade and it will cost them pennies more and if they go for it, they'll get seven days a week and if not they'll get the same three days a week they were getting.
EP: How big of a gamble is this for the Georges? Newspapers are in trouble all over the country but putting two together, that is kind of a big deal.
PK: You know it's kind of an old-school financial play but you know this is a traditional community and obviously one of the flaws with Advance Publications was that they didn't understand New Orleans and they, you know, they gambled wrong, so I think John Georges understands New Orleans a lot better than the Newhouse family.
EP: We wish you the best because a thriving newspaper is important in any community so Thank you.
WWL-TV's coverage partnership with the The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate will continue.