NOLA Bloodbath: Entire Times-Picayune Staff Fired

The Newhouse family has sold the 182-year-old daily The Times-Picayune and its Web site, nola, to a scrappy New Orleans competitor, and the entire staff is being laid off. That has stirred worries across the other papers in the family’s Advance Publications empire.

According to The NYPost, a total of 161 staff members are being laid off, according to a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice filed with the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which listed 65 reporter and editor jobs.

John and Dathel Georges, the husband-and-wife team that owns the rival New Orleans Advocate, are buying The Times-Picayune from Newhouse’s Advance Local, which has owned it since 1962.

The Advocate plans to publish a seven-days-a-week paper using both brands on the masthead starting in early June and will merge both websites under nola.com.

Stunned Times-Picayune staffers heard they were being laid off late Thursday.

The Times-Picayune reported weekday circulation of only 83,860 and weekend circulation of 88,538, compared with a 257,000 circulation before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city in 2005.

Advocate Publisher Dan Shea says he will hire some of the laid-off staffers, but could not say how many.