The formerly New Orleans based newspaper, the Times-Picayune, has announced its newest round of layoffs. This new round of layoffs are pretty deep as well.

We’ll let them tell the story.

The restructuring will also lead to operational efficiencies and will result in an overall reduction of 28 full-time and 9 part-time content staffers – or 21 percent of the overall content operation’s full-time employees, according to NOLA Media Group President Ricky Mathews. Despite the reduction, the remaining 118 full-time journalists on staff as well as more than 50 correspondents covering news, sports, entertainment, food and dining and neighborhood news across metropolitan New Orleans, make NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune by far the largest news-gathering force in the New Orleans region, Mathews said.

The content team will be comparable in size and in some cases larger than other American newsrooms in similar-sized markets, Mathews said.

The New Jersey based publication will restructure its newsroom creating teams to cover everything from politics to sports. Gambit Weekly has some of the names of the people who were let go.

Instead of trying to meet the needs of New Jersey, the Times-Picayune should try to meet the needs of the New Orleans audience. There’s a reason why the locally-owned New Orleans Advocate is winning in everything from readership and respectability.

For starters, instead of an editorial page consisting of every left-wing lunatic they can find; how about a conservative voice or two? After all, the metro New Orleans area is one of the most conservative areas of the country.

Also, the way newspapers are going to survive in the modern, digital is that they will have to offer something the rest of the media doesn’t. Newspapers are going to have to start specializing in old-fashioned in depth reporting. That requires doing more work than simply vomiting up talking points.

Meanwhile, the Times-Picayune will continue to be treated as less of a news source and just simply a liner for crawfish boils.