IN FALL, PAPER WILL CUT YEARLY PRINT EDITION TO THREE
Today we’re announcing we’re building a digitally focused news organization that brings the highly questionable journalism of The New Orleans Levee Newspaper and the extraordinarily-rarely-updated information of nolevee.com together into a new company – the NOLA Satire Group.
As the digital world has evolved, so too will we, finally. Beginning in the fall, the newspaper that so many of you rely upon will start publishing on a reduced schedule of Jan. 15, Aug. 1, and Black Friday. Our marketing department tells us these are the easiest dates to sell ads on, which should indicate our priorities going forward pretty clearly.
In many ways, these three annual papers will be enhanced and more robust than each of your monthly newspapers is now. For example, since they will come out so long after anything important has actually happened, they should have a “timeless” quality. Instead of chasing the headlines, our writers will sit down, focus, take a long nap, get a second job, and then write about something that they thought was funny when they were in college. Or from their childhoods. Also: puzzles and comics, which our marketing department assures us is all you actually read.
Look for enhancements to our award-courting ListWatch and Gogo Geaux coverage. In this case, “enhancements:” means “they will come out much less frequently.”
The world is changing and becoming more digital. More and more of our readers are going online throughout the day for their news, sports, and bitterly racist comments sections. It has gotten to the point where almost our entire staff is dedicated to deleting the most offensive comments in our news section on a real-time basis. We realized it was vital we change the way we handle lowest-common-denominator online discussions if we have any chance of keeping ahead of our nearest competitor, Nola.com.
The NOLA Satire Group will develop new and innovated ways to make it sound like we’re offering more services, while slashing our staff and cashing in on Google Ads money.
For example: We will leverage existing digital media resource vectors to distribute original and partner-licensed content streams that maximize user engagement while limiting exposure to high-cost, low-value assets and expenses.
Didn’t that sound totally Web 2.0? Our marketing department wrote it, and we’re almost certain it means we get more money without having to write hardly anything!
A site-wide redesign of nolevee.com is under way. It began in February with the launch of a new homepage, which, unlike some sites we could mention, is not a hideous yellow color and is actually legible.
When complete, the site will provide a more dynamic experience, with in-depth advertisements, up-to-the-second Facebook links, and the ability to participate in apoplectic anonymous screeching matches over whether a murder suspect is, in fact, black.
We know that for many of you, The New Orleans Levee is an integral part of your lives, whether you’re looking to make fun of metro-area news, checking what idiotic thing the city council is up to, or angrily threatening us with lawsuits via letters to the editor. We will continue our 64-month (and counting) commitment to covering the community where we make all our money. We will deliver our journalism and our advertising messages – especially our advertising messages – in print, through nolevee.com, and via spam that we will sneak into every aspect of your waking life that we can figure out how to monetize, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
And we invite you to participate in this grand adventure, especially those of you with college degrees and disposable incomes who fall in Google’s highest advertising metrics. The marketing people REALLY want to invite you to participate. In fact, if you’d like to just tell us your e-mail address, Facebook ID and Twitter handle, you can start participating right now!
Katrina the Clown, who recently announced changes at The Levee, holds up the "Number 1" sign to let the community know that its concerns over our changes have been heard.
And we’ll remain the most in-depth source of making fun of what’s going on in the communities we serve, reported by the journalists you know and trust. Well, not THAT guy, we had to let him go. No, not the other guy either, sorry, he’s history. No, neither of those two. Look, let’s move on.
To support these efforts, we are creating another new company, Advance Generic Company Name Incorporated Corporation, LLC, to produce and distribute the newspaper, which is essentially an afterthought at this point, and to provide critical legal cover for the NOLA Satire Group.
The New Orleans metro area is our home – in the sense that our parent company intends to continue making money here – and NOLA Satire Group and Advance Generic Company Name Incorporated Corporation, LLC, will leach up the area’s advertising dollars with excellence, as we always have. Just less frequently and with more spam.
Katrina the Clown
Levee Janitor
