YIKES

Times-Picayune Lays Off 200

Nearly one-third of staff.

New Orleans’s famed Times-Picayune newspaper laid off 200 employees on Tuesday—amounting to nearly one third of its staff—as it prepares to only publish three days a week. The 175-year-old paper announced in May that it would cut its print frequency so that the paper could focus more on the Internet. In the news operation alone, 84 of the 169 staffers were notified Tuesday that they will lose their jobs, while the employees not laid off will be offered new jobs with the Nola Media Group, the new company that will oversee the news coverage of the Times-Picayune beginning this fall. One of the largest daily newspapers in the country—and one that enjoys a monopoly in New Orleans—the Times-Picayune won two Pulitzer Prizes in 2006 for its coverage of the devastated city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.