The base of operations for the Plaquemines Gazette newspaper looks like an old-school printing shop because it is a print shop. Located on Belle Chasse Highway just before the Taco Bell in Belle Chasse, you’ll find Print All Inc.
As the name of the business suggests, they can print it all at the store: political banners, resumes, screen printing and embroidery… you name it. At an adjacent building next to its large industrial printers is the newsroom for the Plaquemines Gazette.
It’s a small weekly newspaper with a small staff. There are five full-time employees but they’re not just working for the Gazette. Those five full-time employees are also gathering, writing and editing stories and public notices for the St. Bernard Voice, a sister weekly newspaper with a reporting focus on St. Bernard Parish. Norris Babin is the editor and publisher of the Gazette. He says money is not them main motivation for the newspaper’s staff. He shared a story about a friend who recently asked him how the newspaper was holding up.
“He said Norris, if you don’t mind sharing with me how was your year last year? I said we had a pretty good year. He said really? And I said yeah, it’s the best year we had in a while, we broke even. I started laughing and I said that’s what I call a pretty good year and I was honest about that,” Babin told me.
According to a 2022 study by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the U.S. has been losing two newspapers per week.
In a three-year span (2019-2022), 360 newspapers closed. The continued shift of news consumers turning to their smartphones and devices instead of traditional media continues to gut a newspaper industry that was already declining in advertising revenue and manpower. According to the study, when most communities lose their local newspapers a digital or print replacement rarely arrives to fill the void. That can lead to an “information desert” where people in that particular town, city or parish are not getting news relevant to them.
Despite the glaring challenges in the newspaper industry, the Plaquemines Gazette and the St. Bernard Voice have continued to put out both print and digital editions of their newspapers. That takes a lot of commitment and creativity as I learned when I visited the Gazette’s office in Belle Chasse. So how does a small newspaper keep its doors open nowadays? Listen to my conversation with the Gazette’s staff here.
Related
