Established as
The Picayune in 1837 by Francis Lumsden and
George Wilkins Kendall, the paper's initial price was one
picayune, a Spanish coin equivalent to 6¼¢ (half a
bit, or one-sixteenth of a
dollar). Under
Eliza Jane Nicholson, who inherited the struggling paper when her husband died in 1876, the
Picayune introduced innovations such as
society reporting (known as the "Society Bee" columns), children's pages, and the first women's advice column, which was written by
Dorothy Dix. Between 1880 and 1890, the paper more than tripled its circulation. The paper became
The Times-Picayune after merging in 1914 with its rival, the New Orleans
Times-Democrat. From 1947 to 1958, the paper operated a radio station, WTPS, launching first on
FM at on January 3, 1947, and adding an AM station at a year later.
WTPS-AM later moved to . The stations primarily aired music, but also included newscasts drawn from the paper's staff and live broadcasts of local high school, college, and professional sports. Both stations went off the air on November 30, 1958 and was sold to Rounsaville. In 1962,
Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr., bought
The Times-Picayune and the other remaining New Orleans daily, the afternoon
States-Item. The papers were merged on June 2, 1980 and were known as
The Times-Picayune/States-Item (except on Sundays; the
States-Item did not publish a Sunday edition) until September 30, 1986. In addition to the flagship paper, specific community editions of the newspaper are also circulated and retain the
Picayune name, such as the
Gretna Picayune for nearby
Gretna, Louisiana. In 2019,
The Times-Picayune was purchased by Georges Media, whose chair is
John Georges, a New Orleans business owner. Georges Media also publishes
The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the vernacular of its circulation area, the newspaper is often called the
T-P.
Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina became a significant part of
The Times-Picayunes history, not only during the storm and its immediate aftermath but for years afterward in repercussions and editorials. As Hurricane Katrina approached on Sunday, August 28, 2005, dozens of the newspaper's staffers who opted not to evacuate rode out the storm in their office building, sleeping in sleeping bags and on air mattresses. Holed up in a small, sweltering interior office space—the photography department—outfitted as a "hurricane bunker," the newspaper staffers and staffers from the paper's affiliated website, NOLA.com, posted continual updates on the internet until the building was evacuated on August 30. With electrical outages leaving the presses out of commission after the storm, newspaper and web staffers produced a "newspaper" in electronic PDF format. On NOLA.com, meanwhile, tens of thousands of evacuated New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents began using the site's forums and blogs, posting pleas for help, offering aid, and directing rescuers. NOLA's nurturing of so-called
citizen journalism on a massive scale was hailed by many journalism experts as a watershed, while several agencies credited the site with leading to life-saving rescues and reunions of scattered victims after the storm. After deciding to evacuate on Tuesday, August 30, because of rising floodwaters and possible security threats, the newspaper and web staff set up operations at
The Houma Courier and in
Baton Rouge, on the
Louisiana State University campus. A small team of reporters and photographers volunteered to stay behind in New Orleans to report from the inside on the city's struggle, looting, and desperation. They armed themselves for security and worked out of a private residence. The August 30, August 31, and September 1 editions were not printed, but were available online, as was the paper's breaking news
blog: After three days of online-only publication, the paper began printing again, first in Houma, La., and beginning September 15, 2005, in Mobile, Ala.; it resumed publication in New Orleans on October 10, 2005. The paper was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2006 for its storm coverage. Several of its staff reporters also received the award for breaking news reporting for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina––Gordon Russell,
Jed Horne and Bob Marshall––marking the first time a Pulitzer had been awarded for online journalism. In a January 14, 2006 address to the
American Bar Association Communications Lawyers Forum,
Times-Picayune editor
Jim Amoss commented on perhaps the most significant challenge that the staff faced then and continued to face as the future of New Orleans is contemplated:
Limited publication dates, launch of The New Orleans Advocate playing at one of the ultimately unsuccessful rallies in 2012 to "Save the
Picayune" as a daily newspaper On May 24, 2012, the paper's owner, Advance Publications, announced that the print edition of the
Times-Picayune would be published three days a week (Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) beginning at the end of September. News of the change was first revealed the night before in a blog post by
New York Times media writer
David Carr. A new company, NOLA Media Group, was created to oversee both the paper and its website, NOLA.com. Along with the change in its printing schedule, Advance also announced that significant cuts would be coming to the newsroom and staff of the
Picayune. A second new company, Advance Central Services Louisiana, was created to print and deliver the newspaper. The decision to end daily circulation led to protests calling for continued publication for the
common good; fifty local businesses wrote an open letter to the Newhouse family, urging them to sell the paper instead since they had stated it was still profitable. An group of community institutions and civic leaders, The Times-Picayune Citizens Group, was formed to seek alternatives for the continued daily publication of the newspaper. In October 2012,
The Times-Picayune began publishing its
broadsheet paper on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Along with the change, the paper began publishing a special
tabloid-sized edition following Sunday and Monday
New Orleans Saints football games and an "early" Sunday broadsheet edition, available on Saturdays. The thrice-weekly publication schedule made New Orleans the largest American city not to have a
daily newspaper, until
The Advocate of Baton Rouge began publishing a New Orleans edition each day to fill the perceived gap on August 18, 2013. On June 12, 2012, Advance followed through with its layoff plans, as about 200
Times-Picayune employees (including almost half of the newsroom staff) were notified that they would lose their jobs. In January 2013, NOLA Media Group moved its news-gathering operation, along with sales, marketing, and other administrative functions, from its building at 3800 Howard Avenue, New Orleans, to offices on the 32nd and 31st floors of the One Canal Place office tower at 365 Canal Street, New Orleans. Advance Central Services Louisiana employees remained at Howard Avenue. In April 2018, NOLA Media Group moved from the offices at One Canal Place to a newly renovated location at 201 St. Joseph Street, New Orleans. Its news staff, sales and sales support staff, marketing, and other administrative staff now work from the Warehouse District offices, offices in St. Tammany Parish at 500 River Highlands Blvd., Covington, and the existing East Jefferson Times-Picayune Bureau at 4013 N Interstate 10 Service Road W, Metairie.
The Times-Picayune's resumption of daily publication On April 30, 2013, the paper's publisher announced plans to print a tabloid version of
The Times-Picayune, called
Times-Picayune Street, on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, sold only through newsstands and retail locations. The move returned the paper to a daily printing schedule (including the "early" Sunday edition offered at newsstands on Saturdays). The
TP Street edition first went on sale Monday, June 24, 2013. The new edition removed from New Orleans the designation as the largest city in the United States without its own daily newspaper; with
The Times-Picayune and the New Orleans edition of
The Advocate, the city now has two. However, in reporting its print circulation figures to the
Alliance for Audited Media,
The Times-Picayune still provides data only for the home-delivery days of Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. The paper returned to a full broadsheet format for all editions on September 6, 2014, and ceased using the "TP Street" name. On the same date, NOLA Media Group began publishing "bonus" editions of
The Times-Picayune on Saturdays and Mondays to be home-delivered to all three-day subscribers at no additional cost. The bonus editions were delivered for 17 weeks, the duration of the 2014 football season. On January 3, 2015, NOLA Media Group returned the paper to its previous three-day home delivery, printing two-section papers for street sales only on the other four days. On Saturday, February 13, 2016, NOLA Media Group debuted a street-sales-only "Early Sunday" edition, a hybrid of features from the former Saturday street-sales-only paper and sections from the Sunday paper, offered at the Sunday price.
Additional cuts On October 21, 2014, the paper announced it would begin printing and packaging
The Times-Picayune in Mobile, Alabama, sometime in late 2015 or early 2016, closing the plant on Howard Avenue in New Orleans and eliminating more than 100 jobs at Advance Central Services Louisiana. The Howard Avenue building, which housed all aspects of the newspaper operation, opened in 1968. The building's lobby is lined with custom panels by sculptor
Enrique Alferez, showing symbols used in communication throughout history. Although NOLA Media Group said in 2014 that it hoped to donate the building to a nonprofit institution in the community, it ultimately sold the building on September 2, 2016, to a local investor group for $3.5 million. The newspaper of Sunday, January 17, 2016, was the last
Times-Picayune to be printed in New Orleans. The street-sales-only newspaper of Monday, January 18, 2016, was the first to be printed in Mobile. The New Orleans presses were to be decommissioned. The circulation numbers for the printed
Times-Picayune were the largest newspaper in Louisiana until the end of 2014. By then, declines in its sales, combined with circulation gains by
The Advocate, dropped
The Times-Picayune to second place behind
The Advocate. NOLA Media Group announced on June 15, 2015, that it would join with Alabama Media Group in a new regional media company across Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, to be called Southeast Regional Media Group. Additional job losses were expected in Louisiana; those cuts came September 17, 2015, when NOLA Media Group fired 37 journalists, 28 of them full-time employees and nine part-timers. Hardest-hit were the Baton Rouge bureau, which had been expanded in the 2012 makeover, as well as
The Times-Picayune's high school prep sports staff and its music reporting staff. The merged company was named Advance Media Southeast, registered in New Orleans. A facility to design and produce the pages of
The Times-Picayune and four newspapers in Alabama and Mississippi—
The Birmingham News, the
Mobile Press-Register,
The Huntsville Times, and
The Mississippi Press in Pascagoula—was opened in January 2016 in a former suburban bureau of
The Times-Picayune in
Metairie, emptying the Howard Avenue building of the remaining staff. The Metairie building also houses Advance Central Services Southeast, formed from the combined Advance Central Services units in Louisiana and Alabama. Production of another Advance newspaper,
The Oregonian, was moved to the Metairie location in late 2016.
2019 acquisition On May 2, 2019, Advance Publications announced that
The Times-Picayune had been sold to Georges Media, owner of
The Advocate. The new owners stated that both papers would be folded into a single operation by June 2019 and that the NOLA.com brand would be maintained for the combined newspaper's digital operations. A filing required under the
WARN Act stated that the entire staff of the
Times-Picayune had been laid off, resulting in a loss of 161 jobs, including 65 journalists. The merged paper initially re-hired 10 of those journalists, and about 12 other employees. ==
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate online==