Article source for : LA Times plans new Web initiative
LA Times "story":http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-ex-oshea24jan25,0,6930822,full.story about how the paper will try to catch up to the other biggies in the Web arena.
Some excerpts from the story:
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Los Angeles Times Editor James E. O'Shea unveiled a major initiative [Jan 24, 2007] designed to expand the audience and revenue generated by the newspaper's website, saying the newspaper is in "a fight to recoup threatened revenue that finances our news gathering."
O'Shea named Business Editor Russ Stanton to the innovation post and said the "Internet 101" course would teach reporters, editors and photographers how to post content on latimes.com. He emphasized the need for speed in reforming an operation that he called "woefully behind" the competition.
"At this rate, those double-digit profit margins everyone cites will be in single digits and then be gone," O'Shea said, adding later: "If we don't help reverse these revenue trends, we will not be able to cost-effectively provide the news -- the daily bread of democracy. The stakes are high."
The announcement by The Times editor follows an industry trend in which newspapers large and small are shifting resources and energy to the Web, where revenues are growing, and away from print editions, where ad dollars are shrinking.
The Spring Street committee, named after the Times' downtown address, began its work in October and produced a scathing report that has been seen by only a few of the newspapers top editors and executives. "To put it bluntly," the seven-page report found, "as a news organization, we are not web-savvy. If anything, we are web-stupid."
Among the impediments the group cited or implied as stalling growth at latimes.com:
* Lack of assertive leadership and adequate focus on the website, both inside The Times and at the paper's parent, Tribune Co.
* Understaffing. Latimes.com employs about 18 "talented and dedicated" editorial employees, only a fraction of the 200 employees at the Washington Post's website and the 50 employed by the New York Times' site.
* "Creaky" technology that has made it impossible for latimes.com to host live chats between readers and journalists and to let readers customize stock tables or weather reports.
* Failure to integrate the newspaper's large news staff into operations at the web, contributing to delays in posting breaking news.
A philosophical clash between the website's top two employees -- general manager Rob Barrett and senior editor Joel Sappell -- also "hampered the site's ability to grow," the report stated. Barrett wanted the site to focus on "hyper-local" reports, to deliver Southern California readers information about their communities. Sappell argued for building "communities of affinity" rather than geography, and focused on multimedia presentations to showcase Times projects, the committee said.
Fights between the local management of the website and its overseers at Tribune Interactive in Chicago also hamstrung latimes.com, the report said. Even small technological improvements required "long waits for Web technicians in Chicago to 'build' the technology."
The report called on Times management to make Internet improvements an urgent priority. With 5.1 million unique visitors a month and 73 million total page views, latimes.com's traffic tops most other newspaper websites. But usage trends are in the wrong direction.
At the time of the report late last year, latimes.com was the 766th most active website in the world and not in the top 100 in the U.S., according to the tracking service Alexa Internet. That compared to the nytimes.com ranking of 95th in the world and 21st in the U.S. and washingtonpost.com's rankings of 264th in the world and 54th in America.
Latimes.com users also tend to spend less time on the site than users spend on other top news sites. The 11.9 minute average stay at latimes.com is only half the amount of time users spend on nytimes.com.
In mid-February, the paper plans to roll out a new Travel website that will focus on Southern California and allow users to book trips -- the sort of e-commerce that other newspaper sites rolled out years ago.
A "Calendarlive" site, an extension of the Times Thursday Calendar Weekend print edition, will be designed as a destination for personal entertainment choices such as restaurants, movies, theater, concerts and clubs.
An enhanced foreign page could feature video, photo galleries, graphics and chats with The Times roughly two dozen overseas reporters.
The paper also plans to experiment with pilot projects on *"hyper local"* coverage in a few, as yet unnamed, communities. Those pages would rely heavily on content such as community calendars, crime statistics, school test scores and neighborhood discussion groups, O'Shea said in an interview.
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