Abstract
Reviewing a book published 2 years ago, about a topic in motion then and now, seems like arriving after the underwater battle at the end of the James Bond Thunderball movie and meticulously drowning the survivors. In the case of Hell and High Water, however, it seems appropriate to push forward Rebecca Theim’s 2013 angry book detailing Advance Publications’s decision to cut scores of journalists while (temporarily) cutting The Times-Picayune (T-P) to a thrice-weekly publication.
Plenty of New Orleans citizens were and remain devastated about the New York company’s wholesale changes at The T-P. So was Theim, a former T-P reporter. She became personally involved in the story, from describing how T-P management would not talk to her and her work in a charity that raised money for laid-off T-P employees. Her book includes dozens of stories of loyal readers and city power brokers raging impotently at the carpetbaggers who own the paper, of staffers hauled to the curb like so much waterlogged furniture, and of survivors’ guilt and sour morale.
Theim’s lack of objectivity is best described as empathy, and the book is at its best when providing insiders’ views of the human costs of a company acting like a racing team changing directions—and motors—while driving at top speed in the public eye. The book is less effective when focusing on the bigger picture, which would have provided readers more context into the T-P’s troubles. Owning a newspaper in an industry whose revenue plunged by half in recent few years—and particularly in a town that shrank after the hurricane—deserved more clear-eyed financial understanding.
Yet some of the book’s mentions of other papers’ efforts to stay afloat seem sad now. The book criticizes the free NOLA.com site, pointing to the paywall at The Dallas Morning News as a way to make money. The Dallas paywall collapsed in late 2013, and more layoffs occurred in summer 2015. The book also points to the promises of The Orange County Register to build better journalism by doubling the staff, expanding markets, and erecting a paywall. That effort died by 2014, with layoffs rivaling those in New Orleans, top managers quitting, and lawsuits for unpaid bills.
Two years ago, the book offered no solutions. Two years later, there still may be few.