2/22/17 New Orleans Picayune Research

The past few days we watched a video and read an article about the struggles the New Orleans Picayune has encountered over the years. The first question we were asked to consider was how did this newspaper contribute to the common good. It explained in the reading and video that this newspaper exposed many government conspiracies and gave the public the whole truth. After this we were asked to explore the ways in which the newspaper cut cost and increased revenue and how these changes contributed to changing the quality of the newspaper. They cut costs by deciding to only distribute print newspapers 3 days of the week instead of everyday and creating a 24 hour website that reported all of their news. Along with this they laid off thousands of employees. They increased revenue by allowing for a deal of 10 free stories if an online subscription is bought, increasing price of the newspaper, and creating online news apps. While these changes may have been necessary to keep the newspaper alive, I believe it resulted in a decrease of the newspapers quality because instead of getting important news everyday, we were left to search for the "boring" stories and only being provided the entertainment stories. The news began to focus on celebrities and sports more so then the important stories about government and political problems that needed to be public knowledge in order to have informed citizens. All in all I think this opened my eyes and showed me that while I am going to have to make some of these decisions with my magazine, I should never compromise the integrity of my magazine just for better ratings and more money. I need to be sure to keep my magazine on the path I set it out on in the first place. - Hope Bumgarner