The States-Item

The Times-Picayune

The front page of The Times-Picayune from September 2, 2005.
Type	Daily
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Advance Publications
Publisher	David Francis
Editor	Mark Lorando
Founded	January 25, 1837
Headquarters	365 Canal Street New Orleans, Louisiana 70130 United States
ISSN	1055-3053
Website	nola.com

The Times-Picayune is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana, since January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 1914 merger of The Picayune with the Times-Democrat; and was printed on a daily basis until October 2012, when it went to a Wednesday/Friday/Sunday schedule. However, under competitive pressure from a new New Orleans edition of The Advocate (based in Baton Rouge), the Times-Picayune resumed daily publication in 2014.

The paper and the NOLA.com website, form the NOLA Media Group division of Advance Publications.

The paper was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2006 for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Four of The Times-Picayune’s staff reporters also received Pulitzers for breaking-news reporting for their coverage of the storm. The paper funds the Edgar A. Poe Award for journalistic excellence, which is presented annually by the White House Correspondents' Association.

Established as The Picayune in 1837 by Francis Lumsden and George Wilkins Kendall, the paper's initial price was one picayune, a Spanish coin equivalent to 6¼¢ (or precisely one-sixteenth of a dollar). Under Eliza Jane Nicholson, who inherited the struggling paper when her husband died in 1876, the Picayune introduced innovations such as society reporting (known as the "Society Bee" columns), children's pages, and the first women's advice column, which was written by Dorothy Dix. Between 1880 and 1890, the paper more than tripled its circulation.

The paper became The Times-Picayune after merging in 1914 with its rival, the New Orleans Times-Democrat. In 1962, Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr., bought the morning daily The Times-Picayune and the other remaining New Orleans daily, the afternoon States-Item. The papers were later merged on June 2, 1980 and were known as The Times-Picayune/States-Item (except on Sundays) until September 30, 1986.