Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Mark Schleifstein to remain at The Sometimes Picayune
Folks,
This morning, I delivered my signed job offer/application to the management of the new Nola Media Group.
The decision to stay was difficult for many reasons, including my own anger at how the announcement was made (or not made) of the decision to move to 3-day-a-week publication of The Times-Picayune and the creation of the new/revised online presence, and my continuing concern about whether employees of the new entities will have any say in their direction, development.
That being said, however, at this time in my own career and in the post-daily paper life of New Orleans, I felt that I owe a responsibility to our community to attempt to continue to provide them with quality coverage of the environment, the area's levee system and hurricanes.
I continue to view our future as promising. We have the opportunity of creating a local version of ProPublica or Huffington Post without the initial start-up concerns, and with the built-in benefit of both TP subscribers and advertisers. We'll still have to work hard to convince both subscribers and advertisers that we are going to continue to offer them a product that meets their needs, that they can be proud to be associated with.
I'll do my best to assist in that process.
I urge any of you that know of journalism openings to pass them on to me, so that I can then pass them on to those of our staff who are being let go.
And wish me well as we figure out whether there really is life after the daily newspaper.
Mark Schleifstein

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