Nightly News   |  May 24, 2012

Times-Picayune driven to downsize

The newspaper industry’s dwindling profits have forced one of the nation’s oldest newspapers to stop printing newspapers seven days a week. Instead, the New Orleans paper plans to print three issues a week and host the rest of its content online. NBC’s Anne Thompson reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> bad news arrived today from a great american city where this broadcast has spentd a taught of time and put down roots since hurricane katrina . new orleans, louisiana, is a city easy to love, and that has always included for them their local paper with the unusual name, the times s picayune. today's news was about the local paper.

>>> it's a force even the times picayune couldn't withstand. the paper that survived the civil war , countless mergers, and most famously, hurricane katrina , today bowed to the changing economics of the newspaper industry.

>> this is the end of the line for something that is very important in a community.

>> this fall, it will go from printing papers seven days a week to three while increasing its online efforts. a new direction that will mean job cuts and the loss of community created by everyone reading the same thing.

>> online, people tend to go in a lot of different directions. whereas when somebody delivers you the paper, you look at the front page .

>> affectionately known as the tp, it chronicled l ed the city like no other. but to understand the connection between this city and its paper, one reporter said, you must look through the lens of katrina. a near death experience for both new orleans and the times picayune . while thousands escape the historic storm and flood, david was one of the jurnalists who refused to leave.

>> it was different for us. this wasn't just a story we were covering. we live here.

>> he said the paper exposed the flaws that led to the disaster. he now works for the " los angeles times ."

>> i worry when you take away the newspaper and its watchful eye or reduce its resources to the point it can't do the job it used to do, i worry about the city.

>> a city that has already taken more than its share of hits.

>> and still ahead as we